
Class ■ -- i^ ^^ o 



Book 



V(A 



Copyright^". 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSHV 



Ik. 



The Battles of Labor 



Being the William Levi Bull 
Lectures for the Year 1906 



By 

CARROLL D. WRIGHT, Ph. D., LL. D. 

Former United States Commissioner of La- 
bor y President of Clark College y and Author 
of " Industrial Evolution of the United 
States y' ** Outline of Practical Sociologyy' etc. 




PHILADELPHIA 

GEORGE W. JACOBS & CO 

PUBLISHERS 




LIBRARVtJf'CltJNGRESS 
Tv/o Copies Received 

APR 80 1906 

rig-nt Entry 
CLAS^ a XXc. No 
COPY B. 



LAS^ (A 



L 




Copyright, 1906, by 

George W. Jacobs & Company 

Published^ Aprils igo6 



k^ 



The Letter Establishing the Lectureship 

Bishop Whitaker presented the Letter of Endowment of the 
Lectureship on Christian Sociology from Rev. William L. 
Bull as follows : 

For many years it has been my earnest desire to found a 
Lectureship on Christian Sociology, meaning thereby the 
application of Christian principles to the Social, Industrial, 
and Economic problems of the time, in my Alma Mater, the 
Philadelphia Divinity School. My object in founding this 
Lectureship is to secure the free, frank, and full consideration 
of these subjects, with special reference to the Christian 
aspects of the question involved, which have heretofore, in 
my opinion, been too much neglected in such discussion. 
It would seem that the time is now ripe and the moment an 
auspicious one for the establishment of this Lectureship, at 
least tentatively. 

After a trial of three years, I again make the offer, as in 
my letter of January i, 1901,10 continue these Lectures 
for a period of three years, with the hope that they may 
excite such an interest, particularly among the undergraduates 
of the Divinity School, that I shall be justified, with the ap- 
proval of the authorities of the Divinity School, in placing 
the Lectureship on a more permanent foundation. 

I herewith pledge myself to contribute the sum of six 
hundred dollars annually, for a period of three years, to the 
payment of a lecturer on Christian Sociology, whose duty it 
shall be to deliver a course of not less than four lectures to 
the students of the Divinity School, either at the school or 



elsewhere, as may be deemed most advisable, on the appli- 
cation of Christian principles to the Social, Industrial, and 
Economic problems and needs of the times ; the said lecturer 
to be appointed annually by a committee of five members : 
the Bishop of the Diocese of Pennsylvania ; the Dean of the 
Divinity School ; a member of the Board of Overseers, who 
shall at the same time be an Alumnus ; and two others, one 
of whom shall be myself and the other chosen by the pre- 
ceding four members of the committee. 

Furthermore, if it shall be deemed desirable that the Lec- 
tures shall be published, I pledge myself to the additional 
payment of from one to two hundred dollars for such purpose. 

To secure a full, frank, and free consideration of the ques- 
tions involved, it is my desire that the opportunity shall be 
given from time to time to the representatives of each school 
of economic thought to express their views in these Lectures. 

The only restriction I wish placed on the lecturer is that 
he shall be a believer in the moral teachings and principles 
of the Christian Religion as the true solvent of our Social, 
Industrial, and Economic problems. Of course, it is my 
intention that a new lecturer shall be appointed by the com- 
mittee each year, who shall deliver the course of Lectures for 
the ensuing year. 

WILLIAM LEVI BULL. 



Contents 

I. The Background ... 7 

11. In Medieval and Modern In- 
dustry 57 

III; Great Modern Battles . . 109 

IV. How Modern Battles of Labor 

are Treated . . .163 



I 

THE BACKGROUND 



THE BACKGROUND 

The dark and unhappy background of 
the modern battles of labor is to be found 
not in our modern system of industry, but 
in the revolts and massacres growing out of 
labor conditions largely in antiquity and 
through the ages prior to the institution of 
the factory system. 

The difference between the character of 
modern strikes and lockouts and the an- 
cient disturbances which preceded them is 
not so great as one might imagine at first 
thought. Our modern strikes are to secure 
social and economic freedom or advanced 
and improved conditions. The ancient 
strikes were to secure not only social and 
economic development, but personal free- 
dom, and they often grew out of religious 
and political controversies, elements which 



lo The Background 

do not enter, at least to any degree, into our 
modern battles. 

It is generally supposed that the modern 
system of industry is peculiarly productive 
of the contests of labor and capital, or rather 
the conflicts between laborers and their em- 
ployers ; yet a careful study of history re- 
veals the fact that, considering the differ- 
ence in conditions, and in some respects the 
causes underlying modern controversies, 
they find their root in the far past. There 
have been centuries that have been quite 
free from labor conflicts, but the struggle of 
the wage-earner in our time to secure some- 
thing which he deems important to his life 
springs from the same aspiration that in- 
spired the workers of antiquity and the ages 
between antiquity and the present time. 

Wherever the struggle has resulted in ac- 
tion, that action and the struggle itself 
must be considered as aspiration, for no 
man and no body of men ever engaged in a 
great contest without some lofty aspiration 
as the moving spring. 



The Background ii 

This is evidenced when we consider what 
labor is. Ruskin has defined it, philo- 
sophically, in a way that we can accept. 
He said : *' Labor is the contest of the life 
of man with an opposite ; the term ^ life ' 
including his intellect, soul, and physical 
power, contending with question, difficulty, 
trial or material force. Labor is of a higher 
or lower order as it includes more or fewer 
of the elements of life ; and labor of good 
quality, in any kind, includes always as 
much intellect and feeling as will fully and 
harmoniously regulate the physical force." 

All life, and particularly that led by the 
laborer, being a contest of the life of man 
with an opposite, all the conflicts of the 
past or of the present must be considered as 
the struggle of man to overcome a difficulty 
or secure an advantage or improved condi- 
tions and environment, in the estimation of 
those who organized the conflict, and who 
engaged in the sacrifices, bloodshed, and 
unhappy consequences which came from it. 

The world of society in all its elements 



12 The Background 

is a constant struggle, but the great labor 
struggle in all its breadth and comprehen- 
siveness not only underlies all other forms 
of struggle, but it preceded them all, for 
man has ever been undertaking to carry out 
the first great command which God gave to 
the human race, which was '' to multiply 
and replenish the earth, and to subdue it.'* 
The attempt to subdue the earth, to conquer 
it, has involved labor, invention, planning, 
organization, the preservation of results ; 
and it has called for laws, constitutions, and 
established government.^ 

So in this struggle for the conquest of the 
earth we find the great fundamental princi- 
ples or initiative forces of all the battles of 
labor. The evils, the problems, the rough 
places, the hardships and sacrifices cannot 
be enumerated, but when we understand 
philosophically the course of history in 
these respects, the attitudes of the Semitic 
and Aryan races, the first meaning more of 
cooperation and human sympathy, the sec- 

* Cf. Cephas Brainard, Jr. 



The Background 13 

ond standing in its march around the world 
for the great principles of competition, we 
see those psychological forces which have 
entered into all the great conflicts. 

But in all the conflicts of modern times 
the laborer is supposed to be a human being, 
endowed, as are all the sons of God, with an 
immortal element which we call the soul, 
while in the olden time the man who la- 
bored to secure the productions necessary 
for life, convenience, and comfort was con- 
sidered as a being too low to have a soul. 
This distinction in the estimate marks great 
distinction in the treatment. 

The historian of the far past, and to a 
great extent of the times nearer to us, has 
been unfair to labor ; unfair not only in 
treatment, whenever he condescended to 
speak of labor, but far more unfair in his 
negligence of any treatment. The historians 
of antiquity, imbued with the idea to which 
I have just referred, that the workers in 
society had no souls, did not consider it 
worth while, or at least dignified, to pay 



14 The Background 

any more attention to them in their records 
than they would to beasts of burden, animal 
creations also without souls. Hence popu- 
lar illusions relative to the history of 
labor itself and especially to the accounts 
of its endeavors through its aspirations for 
better conditions, to overcome the great dif- 
ficulties under which it was employed. A 
few stray passages here and there, some- 
thing from hieroglyphics and slabs un- 
earthed and translated in more recent times, 
give about all the knowledge we have of 
the conflicts of slave and master, of em- 
ployer and employee. 

In our modern understanding a strike 
occurs when the employees of an establish- 
ment refuse to work unless the management 
complies with some demand, and a lockout 
occurs when the management refuses to 
allow the employees to work unless they 
will work under some condition dictated by 
the management but offensive or distasteful 
to the employees. So in effect strikes and 
lockouts are practically the same thing, the 



The Background 15 

disturbances simply originating with one 
side or the other as may be. 

This definition of strikes and lockouts 
applies with as much truth and effect to 
those occurring in antiquity as to those we 
have witnessed during the present genera- 
tion, which may be considered the great era 
of modern strikes. 

The background therefore for all the bat- 
tles of labor clearly belongs to antiquity and 
not to the inception or progress of what is 
known as the modern industrial system, or 
the factory system so-called. 

To maintain this thesis it is well to give 
attention in this first lecture to some of the 
great conflicts of the past not only for the 
purpose of understanding the background 
of the present, but of understanding the 
elements of similarity in all history. 

The solidity of this position finds ample 
corroboration in the great trade unions that 
have existed since history took any account 
of human affairs. What was in pre-historic 
times we know not, but history gives illus- 



i6 The Background 

tration after illustration not only of the 
organization and long-continued existence 
and the great power of trade unions as such, 
but of their conflicts and their trials. The 
accounts of these unions, as well as of the 
great strikes and uprisings of the workers 
of the old world, are quite unknown to 
students and to those of our own age, but 
we should not be ignorant of them if we 
wish to be fair and intelligent as well in 
considering modern conditions. 

Mr. C. Osborne Ward, in his very valua- 
ble work entitled '' The Ancient Lowly," 
enumerates no fewer than thirty-five trade 
unions existing at one time under the law 
of Constantine. It is impossible of course 
to say when such unions first came into 
existence, but that they existed cannot be 
denied. In Rome the freedmen themselves 
constituted the chief membership, but it is 
not clear what inspired them. The}^ were 
secret orders. Nor are we able to reach any 
positive conclusion as to their philosophical, 
religious or economic characters. They 



The Background 17 

grew out of that old contempt for and taint 
of labor resulting from the opinion to which 
I have referred, that the workers had no 
souls. But the right of combination from 
the very earliest times was enjoyed. 

The Romans had no conspiracy laws re- 
lative to such combinations ; such laws were 
left for more modern legislators. The right 
extended throughout Europe in the time of 
Numa Pompilius, so seven hundred years 
before the opening of the Christian Era 
trade unions existed in large numbers. 
Pompilius not only tolerated them, but he 
was the author of some regulations concern- 
ing them. He distributed the entire people, 
including the working people themselves, 
into eleven guilds. Plutarch and Mommsen 
are not agreed on this matter, but careful 
consideration seems to show that Plutarch 
was more nearly correct. They differed 
chiefly as to the number of classes, which 
is not important. 

Distinct trades existed and they embraced 
all the arts of Roman times. There was in 



i8 The Background 

those days much skill, for mechanics made 
all the armor for warriors. During the 
reign of Pompilius — thirty-nine years — the 
trade organizations developed in large 
degree, and notwithstanding the Roman 
idea of crushing them or treating them 
with great harshness, they existed almost 
uninterruptedly for about seven hundred 
years, Pompilius even making them the 
basis for some of his reforms. 

So his reign must be considered, as we 
look back upon it, as of great value in teach- 
ing many lessons in the treatment of the 
laborer, Plutarch even comparing Numa 
with Lycurgus. 

Numa did not organize trade unions ; he 
found them already in existence, but the 
privilege to organize and freedom from 
hostile legislation was what he granted 
them. Their members did not have the 
immunities possessed by others, for caste 
in its severest forms existed. Laborers were 
still degraded and so remained until the 
great Master declared them equal, for it 



The Background 19 

was not many years before His time that 
there was a cessation of privileges. 

Tarquin and Claudius utterly failed in 
suppressing them. The aristocrats of those 
days were as fierce and as antagonistic in 
their hatred of the man who worked as any 
brutal master of modern times. Cicero, in 
his violent attacks upon organization, ex- 
pressed the sentiments of the favored 
classes. 

It is quite evident from fugitive state- 
ments that Pompilius borrowed his ideas 
from the condition, or rather the position, 
of the organizations of labor as they existed 
in Egypt, Asia Minor, and Attica ; and 
both Numa and Solon legalized such organ- 
izations and did not interfere with the right 
of combination, for Numa recognized the 
unions even before Solon of Athens, who 
must be considered as a follower of Numa 
rather than a leader in these respects. 

As against these men Lycurgus insisted 
that no slaves should be emancipated. He 
was a strong believer in the most rigid 



20 The Background 

military control, so under his laws all labor 
must be conducted by men held in abject 
submission and slavery. The Pelopennesian 
trade unions were not given the encourage- 
ment that Numa gave, and so there are to be 
found but few tablets with inscriptions 
suggestive of the existence of labor organ- 
izations. But in the Northern Grecian 
Isles, Asia Minor, and Italy there are many 
monuments suggestive of their existence, but 
historians have left them in darkness and 
only the archaeologists have been ready to 
give them light. 

Notwithstanding the grudging tolerance 
referred to, labor was not recognized as 
being respectable or even decent. The 
right to organize and combine was not ex- 
tended to the slaves. The slaves therefore 
in their uprisings, or strikes as we should 
now call them, depended upon some brave 
leader to organize them into insurrection- 
ary forces. 

There were a great many burial associa- 
tions and they were powerful auxiliaries, 



The Background 21 

or rather ancillary societies, to the trade 
unions. They acted under the garb of re- 
ligion and without regard to the law, even 
after the passage of the conspiracy laws b. c. 
58 ; for in spite of such legislation the 
unions as well as the associations exercised 
their peculiar functions. This was because 
there were some wealthy men among the 
membership who sought to control social 
and political action. They were of plebeian 
stock. Another cause was that, when they 
felt the persecution and recognized the at- 
tempts to crush them, they intensified the 
secret features of their orders. In this per- 
haps is to be found the reason for the first 
great blow which was given them, for in 
secret conclave they gave themselves to acts 
of conspiracy and diplomacy in order to 
accomplish their ends. 

The burial societies — the trade unions of 
those days — were quite generally organized. 
There were the plasterers, the goldsmiths, 
the workers in mosaic, the brass-and cop- 
persmiths, silversmiths, gold gilders, deco- 



22 ^ The Background 

rators, plumbers, painters, stone-cutters, 
masons, carpenters, and many others who 
had their unions ; even the doctors and 
architects combined to practice their arts 
and to advance their conditions. There is 
evidence sufficient to warrant the conclusion 
that the artisans in the building trades were 
organized. They certainly held their or- 
ganization through a period of six hundred 
years at Rome, and nearly as many in 
Attica and other parts of Greece. The 
masons were interlinked, or thoroughly 
associated, with the unions in the building 
trades. They agreed upon prices at which 
work should be done. They had a federa- 
tion for the very purpose of taking contracts 
for the erection, decoration, and finishing 
of temples and public edifices. 

There was also a great organization of 
armor-makers. This comprehended a great 
number of subsidiary occupations, em- 
bracing the iron and metal workers, artists 
in the alloys, manufacturers of weapons, 
shoes, and other necessary articles for war 



The Background 23 

purposes ; the shield-makers, arrowsmiths, 
sling-makers, and all the others necessary 
for the production of war material. Then 
there were peculiar organizations among 
those who supplied food, both for the 
armies and for the people. In fact, Rome 
herself could not have carried on her great 
wars without the efficiency of the trade 
unions. The victualing system generally 
attracted much attention and was tolerated 
perhaps more generously than the other 
orders, the unions of fishermen or other 
suppliers or producers of food being neces- 
sary for the public welfare. 

It is recorded that a stone has been dug 
up bearing an inscription which exhibits 
the relics of a union of manufacturers of 
cooking utensils. So we see that the wants 
of life were supplied, not in a helter-skelter 
way, but through organizations. Organiza- 
tion was carried even further than we know 
it to-day. The mimics had their unions, 
and in some of their performances there 
may be found the origin of wakes. The 



24 The Background 

dancers, trumpeters, bagpipers, horn-blowers, 
and other instrumentalists were organized 
as our musicians are to-day. Whether one 
of them would play with a non-union mu- 
sician has not been revealed. Then those 
engaged in the games, — circus performers, 
gladiators, fortune-tellers, — all these had 
their unions ; and some of the elements of the 
gladiatorial scenes, ferocious and bloody, 
between the working men and tigers and 
other wild animals, being made compulsory 
by Roman law, had their influence in some 
of the great uprisings of the olden time. 

The clothing-cutters and workers in tex- 
tiles, the fullers, the weavers, the carders, 
the combers, all these were organized. The 
government undertook to conduct many in- 
dustries, and the organizations of labor 
found some friendly tolerance as a conse- 
quence. 

One of the most interesting and even 
valuable experiences of antiquity in this 
respect was the organization of the image- 
makers. They were the people who worked 



The Background 25 

for the gods ; they were known as big and 
little godsmiths. So when Christianity 
dawned on the world these image-makers 
were opposed to the new religion, for if 
idols were to be abolished, if Pagan ceremo- 
nies were not to continue, there would be 
little or no work for the image-makers. 
Paganism was tyrannical, cruel, and re- 
ligious as well. It ignored what we call 
the proletariat. Nevertheless in its temples, 
beautiful, magnificent, were numerous idols 
exhibiting the very finest and most skilful 
work the world produced ; beautiful altars, 
sepulchres, sarcophagi, and mausoleums. 
All these must go if Christianity obtained 
a hold upon the thought of the world. 
The image-makers therefore opposed Chris- 
tianity, purely for economic reasons, for the 
Christian had no need for idols. But their 
workers, like working men everywhere and 
in all times, ready to accept any new propo- 
sition that looks to greater equality and 
better conditions, finally overcame their 
antagonism and took to their hearts the 



26 The Background 

principles of the new religion ; but the 
workmen's craft as learned, practiced, and 
intensified by the old image-makers existed 
and still exists. 

Without going into further detail rela- 
tive to the organizations of antiquity, we 
may safely assert that they exerted a great 
influence in the development of the skill 
of brain and hand which has left its mark 
in the productions of the old industrial 
system ; skill which is not surpassed to- 
day and the productions of which excite the 
admiration of moderns. They were the 
enemies of the slave system and of all 
monopoly. Their influence and their force 
in legislation, in general economic condi- 
tions, and in the planting of the Christian 
religion cannot be denied. The great 
Master was Himself of them. His youth 
spent among them, and there are writers 
who do not hesitate to assert that He 
worked through labor organizations in 
His endeavor to bring the kingdom on 
earth. There is no positive evidence of 



The Background 27 

this, but the analogies of His preaching 
and the tenets of the labor unions of His 
time surely indicate such a similarity that 
it is not a very great stretch of the imagina- 
tion which leads to the conclusion that if 
not of them He was with them in spirit 
and in action. He loved these working peo- 
ple beyond all other members of the com- 
munities in which He preached. He drew 
His disciples from them, and recognized 
their needs as expressed in their struggles 
and their aspirations. 

Whatever the trials and troubles of labor 
organizations in the past as constituting a 
great element in the background of labor 
as we know it, as helping us to understand 
more fairly and with more Christian spirit 
the evolution of labor, we must still find 
the darker and the unhappier background 
in those uprisings caused by the desire to 
secure, first, personal freedom, and, second, 
better economic conditions. 

So far as history is concerned, the first / 
great battle which labor fought was the 



28 The Background 

strike of Moses and the Jews known in 
sacred history as the Exodus and curiously 
enough this great strike had in it more of 
the elements of our modern battles of 
labor than most of those in ancient times ; 
for there had been a persistent and long- 
continued labor agitation through many, 
many years, during which the Hebrews 
sought by every means in their power of 
representation, petition, and appeal to pre- 
vent or even to modify the severe tasks 
which the Egyptians placed upon them. 
These attempts of the Hebrews resulted 
in bloody encounters when servants and 
masters fought with all the fierceness of 
wild beasts, but Moses, like Spartacus in his 
great struggle, organized the forces of labor 
and ordered a general strike, so thorough 
in all its plans that the whole body of 
Hebrews subject to the persecution of the 
Egyptians — probably a million in all — left 
their employers and marched out in a 
great procession. It is held by some that 
the Egyptians were glad to be rid of this 



The Background 29 

turbulent body, but they showed their 
gladness in their attempts to subdue them. 
The uprising was a clearly defined and 
well defined labor strike, and it was organized 
for economic as well as for physical causes. 
It was the greatest strike that has been 
recorded. The grievances underlying the 
strike are familiar to all and while based 
on economic and social conditions, there 
was a religious element in it all, for two 
chiefs of the tribe made a petition asking 
that Pharaoh would allow them to go to 
some wooded retreat where they might 
celebrate in honor of Jehovah as their 
custom demanded. The delegates or the 
two chiefs presenting this petition on be- 
half of the people were Moses and his 
brother Aaron. They respectfully submit- 
ted their appeal in an interview which the 
king granted, but grudgingly, however. 
These great delegates, whose names live 
to-day, gave evidence that their people 
were kindly disposed, but wearied to the 
very verge of physical exhaustion from 



30 The Background 

overwork, unwholesome food, and depriva- 
tion in every direction. 

They were met by disdain and a manner 
on the part of the king most insulting and 
exasperating. Some employers to-day find 
the formula for an answer, when working 
men respectfully present their claims, in the 
answer which Pharaoh made to Moses and 
Aaron. Pharaoh said : " Wherefore do ye 
lead the people from their work ? Go you 
unto your burdens.'' And Pharaoh told his 
task-masters to say : " Ye shall no more 
give the people straw to make brick as here- 
tofore. Let them go and gather straw for 
themselves." To-day when like petitions 
are presented — but thank God the experi- 
ences are growing less and less under an en- 
lightened intelligence — the employer says : 
^' If you do not like the wages I pay and 
the conditions in my works, go where you 
please. '* The spirit of the answers is the 
same. 

The Egyptian hirelings, who were largely 
the overseers of the Hebrew people, drove 



The Background 31 

them into the direst necessities, and the 
order to gather straw for themselves resulted 
in a corner in straw being worked up by the 
Egyptian workmen, and in the language of 
the Bible the order was, '' Let there be more 
work laid upon the men that they may 
labor therein." 

Moses and Aaron led their people into 
what many writers would call rebellion, but 
into what the sociologist and economist 
must call the greatest strike of recorded 
history. 

We may speak of strikes as economic 
failures, and when we think of that we may 
ask. Was the Hebrew strike a failure ? Out 
of it grew the great law of Moses, the best, 
the wisest ever promulgated prior to the 
Solonic law. Moses led his immense family 
and became its great statesman, deliverer, 
savior. That great legislation that has come 
down to us, that is so full of inspiration, so 
strikingly applicable in our times, found its 
very fundamental principles in the strike of 
Egyptian workmen. That law is indelibly 



32 The Background 

written in every code that has received the 
attention of man since Moses. 

A great uprising or strike with an entirely 
different character grew out of what was 
known as the Eleusinian mysteries. These 
mysteries were based on a myth and held at 
Eleusis, a place of considerable size in At- 
tic Greece about ten miles from Athens. 
The mysterious cult grew out of ancient 
mythology and related to the beautiful 
daughter of Ceres and of Jupiter, who was 
stolen from her mother and carried off by 
Pluto to his nether-world home. The 
mother assuming different garbs or char- 
acters and going to Eleusis there found occu- 
pation in the nursing of a child of the king. 
The boy thrived marvelously, Ceres breath- 
ing her life upon him, purging his mortal 
character of dross, dressing him with oint- 
ment and bathing him with a mysterious 
fire hoped to make this kingly child im- 
mortal. But the mother of the child ob- 
serving these processes of what may be 
called transubstantiation, the boy hanging 



The Background 33 

in a halo of flame, became frightened and 
the old nurse in her trepidation let the 
child drop into the fire itself, and thus he 
perished. Then the old nurse, that she 
might not be sacrificed, rehabilitated her- 
self as Ceres and ordered the people to erect 
for her a beautiful temple where she should 
reside while prosecuting her search for her 
own lost daughter who had been abducted 
by Pluto. In this myth lies the key to the 
Eleusinian mysteries, in celebrating which 
the people of Athens sought to personify 
the transformation of matter into life and 
life into immortality, partially a religious 
ceremony, partially a social one. 

The crusades of the Athenians were to do 
homage to the goddess of the harvests. 
The things real and things unreal finally 
assumed a priesthood in character, and the 
devotees found themselves a great society of 
men and women bound together by ties of 
secrecy, which gave them a power they 
could not otherwise have exercised. 

We do not know just what occurred at 



34 The Background 

the Eleusinian penetralia of mysteries. We 
can only conclude from all that is known that 
they symbolized the procreative potentiality 
of nature itself and that their rites em- 
phasized the elements of eternal bliss. 

To participate in these rights the initiated 
went out from Athens in a crusade, but the 
laborers who had no souls, degraded and 
misunderstood, could take no part in the 
celebration of the mysteries at Eleusis, and 
there was a constant conflict on the passage 
of the great procession. This occurred every 
five years and the festivities lasted nine 
days. 

The outpouring gave the labor organiza- 
tions, the slaves, and all the downtrodden 
the opportunity to attack the procession of 
Eleusinian devotees, and they assaulted the 
crusaders with clubs and stones. They did 
this because they were excluded from partic- 
ipating and because they hated the very 
class of people that made up the crusaders. 
Here was the occasion, although not the 
cause of the great conflict. 



The Background 35 

Insulted with personal assaults the nobil- 
ity and their friends retaliated, and the 
lowly people suffered the consequences. 
Their action was a strike against what they 
considered exclusion from religious rites. 
They entered their protest in a brutal way, 
but they started that great agitation which 
brought to the slaves and others greater 
freedom and recognition. They were the 
men who had built beautiful temples, mag- 
nificent palaces and the monuments of 
ancient Greece. Their skill had been recog- 
nized, and they felt that their personality 
should be recognized as well. It was a 
strike practically for the recognition of the 
union. 

Labor also fought its battles in Lace- 
dsemon through the working people or 
Helots, who were slaves living and working 
in large measure in the rural communities. 

Lycurgus had provided for an annual 
election of magistrates, the ephorL The 
principal object of the establishment of this 
body was to develop democratic principles 



36 The Background 

looking to the equalization and develop- 
ment of the hopes of the people, hut the 
people, other than property owners, were 
practically denied the privilege of suffrage 
or of enjoying the results of their own 
labor, although it is shown by fugitive 
statements that the working people in- 
volved were perhaps as worthy of recog- 
nition and might have been as intelligent 
as their masters. Instead of practicing the 
democratic ideas held by Lycurgus, it was 
sought to reduce the number of working 
people, so under the orders of the ephori 
aristocratic youths were induced to repair to 
a distance and assassinate the workers. 
These young men, unfortunately, had gov- 
ernors or guardians powerful enough to com- 
pel them to carry out these bloody orders 
of the ephori, so whenever a new slaughter 
of the working people was ordained the most 
able-bodied young men were armed and in- 
structed in their inhuman work, and the 
walking delegates of that day, in connivance 
with the authorities, saw to it that the 



The Background 37 

workers themselves went forth without 
arms, and the few naked, ill-fed laborers 
were unsuspectingly driven into the fields 
or places of labor where the assassins, lying 
in wait, indulged in their sanguinary sport. 
It was to carry out the compulsory provi- 
sions of the law of Lycurgus, to indulge in 
manly gymnastics ; it was sport. The aris- 
tocratic youth felt the tingle of blood, the 
toughening of sinews in his athletic de- 
velopment. 

Plutarch, even in his barbarous age, said : 
" The governors of the youth ordered the 
shrewdest of them from time to time to dis- 
perse themselves into the country, provided 
only with daggers and some necessary pro- 
visions. In the daytime they hid them- 
selves and rested in the most private places 
they could find ; but at night they sallied 
out into the roads and killed all the Helots 
they could meet with. Nay, sometimes by 
day they fell upon them in the fields and 
murdered the ablest and strongest of them." 

Here is an example of one of the ancient 



38 The Background 

battles of labor. Such deeds darken the 
background and help us to understand the 
condition out of which labor is growing. 

In Greece, Sicily and Rome in ancient 
times there occurred many great and disas- 
trous strikes. Typical of these was the great 
labor war among the miners of Laurium, 
B. c. 413. The miners knew before they 
entered upon their insurrection that they 
would have to suffer death by torture in 
the most maddening ways that the cruelty 
or the greed of their masters could invent, 
unless their great revolt or strike met with 
success. Among the strikers were slaves 
through the accident of their birth ; some 
were slaves because they were prisoners of 
war; some were slaves because they had 
been bought and sent into the mines, 
and there were many convicts working as a 
punishment, constantly under the lash. 
These men were leased by the overseers or 
contractors from the government who re- 
ceived as compensation for their labor one 
twentieth of the proceeds thereof. So our 



The Background 39 

modern lease system, which has been so 
generally condemned, finds its roots in this 
dark background. 

The working man of the Laurium silver 
mines was a social outcast. These mines 
were not far — only about thirty miles — 
from Athens. The labor was arduous ; men 
and women, some of whom had been guilty 
of some criminal act, were sent into the sub- 
terranean caverns, stripped entirely of their 
clothing, their bodies painted, their legs 
loaded with chains and thus set at work 
breaking the rock and carrying it to the 
mouth of the shaft. Outside smiths and 
others were at work to aid the inside labor- 
ers. It is not more than one hundred years 
since the boys and girls were worked naked 
in the coal mines of England. 

How the dark background of antiquity 
has continued its depressing and demoral- 
izing influence ! Such conditions could not 
be continued without protest, and any pro- 
test then meant battle. The conditions 
were such that the working people hated 



40 The Background 

not only fatherland and employer, but 
home. The labor war then .when it broke 
out, compelled the laborers to seek retreat 
from the infernal cruelties of their bondage. 
The great strike of the silver miners left 
the mines unproductive, a condition which 
could not be tolerated by the government. 
When 20,000 miners, mechanics, teamsters, 
and laborers struck their work and made a 
desperate advance on the Spartan garrison 
at Decelia, they were met by offers of com- 
promise, one of which was that they might 
work on their own reckoning, part of their 
proceeds being paid to their masters. As 
they knew nothing of having plenty of food 
and other comforts, many of them acceded. 
The losses to the armories at Athens through 
the loss of products was a most serious ele- 
ment in the progress of the Pelopennesian 
war, and the strike left its scars not only 
upon the Athenians, but upon all with 
whom they were in affiliation. It was a 
great strike for social and economic better- 
ment and must be so classed. 



The Background 41 

Later on another vast and bloody conflict 
occurred at the same mines, more than a 
thousand striking work and proceeding one 
day in a body to the protecting castle of 
Sunion, claiming and receiving there some 
protection from the divine guardian of that 
place. The strikers killed their overseers, or- 
ganized for combat, seized the arms in the 
armories, laid waste the country, and were 
the masters of the stronghold. They were 
finally defeated by Heraklitos, the mayor 
of the city, with the brutalities of general 
crucifixion usual in such victories. 

Rome was not a stranger in the construc- 
tion of this dark curtain, but her labor wars 
were usually in the nature of conspiracies. 
One of these occurred in Latium about 194 
B. c. It was a strike of slaves and it started 
through a lockout. The degraded wretches 
of the agricultural districts went into collu- 
sion with the slaves inside the city ; they 
really constituted great bands prowling 
among the mountain regions. The people 
of Setia were about to indulge in a gala day, 



42 The Background 

probably some gladiatorial contests were 
ordered. Here was an opportunity for the 
strikers, and by taking advantage of the 
excitement of the populace, the people not 
being on the alert, they expected they could 
plunder the town, take possession of muni- 
tions and weapons necessary for their own 
purposes, and then, armed and supplied, the 
town of Norba would be subjected to vio- 
lence ; the masters and patricians murdered, 
they would have an easy conquest of other 
cities where, under a constant repetition of 
their carnage, they would secure the con- 
trol of what they considered the world. It 
must be remembered, however, that no con- 
ception of there being any world beyond 
their own limited vision was possible. 

This strike was defeated through the ac- 
tion of a traitor to the working people, for 
information was carried to Rome and laid 
before the Praetor by two slaves who ex- 
posed all the plans of the insurrectionists. 

It took not much longer to convoke the 
Roman Senate than it would to convoke 



The Background 43 

our own at the present time, and it was or- 
dered that Merula, the Praetor, with a few 
regular troops then available, should pro- 
ceed against the strikers. It is not known 
whether a conflict ensued, but it is known 
that the ringleaders were apprehended and 
the insuri'ectionists demoralized ; 2,000 of the 
conspirators were slaughtered and the up- 
rising suppressed. 

The grievances which led to the uprising, 
however, could not be suppressed. The 
gibbetings, the murders, the agonies, the re- 
ward of the traitors, caused the spirit of in- 
surrection again to assert itself in the im- 
mediate vicinity of Prseneste, where it was 
discovered that a plot existed to master that 
town. This second insurrection, however, 
failed as did the first, although a battle, ac- 
cording to some authorities, must have been 
fought, one of considerable importance. 
Two thousand ^vq hundred public execu- 
tions took place, to say nothing of those 
who lost their lives in the conflict. 

It can easily be imagined that all these 



44 The Background 

events terrorized the Roman citizens, who 
instituted measures of the strongest vigi- 
lance. Hostages were reduced to slavery, 
prisoners chained ; but the worst punish- 
ment of all was the underground prison, 
the public career, built as early as b. c. 
650-500. This was called the Tullian cell, 
to which, according to Bombardini, the 
Italian jurist, ^' you descended by a ladder 
to the distance of twelve feet into a damp 
hole, excavated in the earth. It was walled 
in on all sides and vaulted overhead hav- 
ing the sections adjoined. It had a putrid 
odor and a frightful outlook." This horrid 
prison developed from something still worse. 
Long before the period of which I am 
speaking, b. c. 198, prisoners were worked 
in this excavation ; masters of the slaves 
lowered their food and scanty clothing to 
them through breathing holes. This prison, 
which may be seen now, was a deep and 
spacious excavation under the Capitoline 
hill, and it was made by slaves. Of course 
vengeance, not correction, guided the au- 



The Background 45 

thorities; as the prisoners quarried the 
stone, the cavities left made prisons for 
themselves. It was this process that caused 
Pliny to designate Rome as the ^' city hang- 
ing in the air." The occupants squeezed 
their bodies between sharp rocks, and the 
prison was a place from which the person 
doomed, when once incarcerated, never 
afterward saw the light of day. It is easy 
to determine whether the causes of these 
bloody insurrections were just or unjust. 

This period, about 200 or 190 b. c, seems 
to have been quite prolific in strikes. 
Some of them resulted from the agrarian 
agitation, others from the attempt to 
establish some sort of socialistic govern- 
ment and other potent reasons and auspi- 
cious questions. 

The historian, Nymphodorus Siculus, 
has given an interesting account of a 
somewhat remarkable strike which oc- 
curred in the island of Scio. This island 
is the ancient Chios, about seven miles 
from the coast of Asia Minor and part of 



46 The Background 

the Greek Archipelago. It contains only a 
little more than five hundred square miles, 
and is considered the primeval home of 
the Pelasgians and the Leleges of Cyclopean 
fame. It is therefore Greek, beautiful in 
its natural aspects of verdure, of forest and 
of stream. Slavery existed there in its 
most accursed forms. While other prov- 
inces kept their slaves recruited from their 
own sons and daughters, as well as from 
the prisoners taken in war-time, Chios 
engaged in the slave traffic in order to 
increase her laborers. 

It is quite impossible to fix the date of 
the occurrence narrated by the historian 
quoted, but it must have been before the 
Christian Era, although Dr. Biicher thinks 
it was some two hundred and fifty 3^ears 
after the birth of Christ. 

At all events, there was a slave named 
Drimakos. He was a runaway who had 
provided himself with a weapon, and rush- 
ing from his owner he secreted himself in 
a den in the mountains, having with him 



The Background 47 

a dozen desperate associates. He could 
supply himself and companions with food 
only by taking it from the dwellings below 
the mountains, where there were fields 
richly cultivated ; or, to some extent, from 
the city from which he was a fugitive. 

It was determined by the masters, includ- 
ing that of Drimakos himself, that these 
desperados must be taken without regard 
to whether they were living or dead ; but 
others taking courage and gathering in- 
spiration from Drimakos joined him among 
the mountain crags. So in a short time 
the slaves found themselves in posses- 
sion of their mountain homes, and their 
number being constantly augmented by 
other fugitives they became a community 
of power, over which Drimakos was made 
king, commander-in-chief, and really a 
despot. As has occurred so many, many 
times in history, this cruelly abused man, 
when given despotic power, began to use it 
with as much severity or nearly so, but with 
more justice perhaps, as did his old masters. 



48 The Background 

The Chians, in order to capture the 
leader and his fellow fugitives, sent an 
expedition into the mountains, but the 
expedition met with defeat, for the 
Chians, through the ingenuity and skill 
of Drimakos, were led into ambush, cut 
to pieces, their arms captured, and the 
fugitives were masters of the field. A 
bloody battle was fought, even a succession 
of battles, but Drimakos, a man of sym- 
pathy through his sufferings and his 
wrongs, appointed a council of arbitration 
and asked a like council on the part 
of his enemies, to settle the whole mat- 
ter and avoid further bloodshed. 

In the council or the conference in which 
the new king met the city magistrates, 
Drimakos made a most remarkable speech, 
as follows : '' We will never lay down our 
arms. We will never again submit to the 
drudgery of bondage. We are fixed in our 
own minds and act under counsel of the 
Almighty. 

"■ Nevertheless if you follow my advice 



The Background 49 

and adhere to it in the strictest faith, after 
signing this pledge and compact, the war 
may be terminated and the further effusion 
of blood dispensed with; then we can 
mutually live in peace and enjoy tranquil- 
lity on terms which will be full of prosper- 
ity to the whole state of which we all are 
members. 

'' What we want is enough to subsist upon 
— no more. In future when hunger and 
need inspire us, we shall visit your gran- 
aries, flocks, and stores and take what we 
require, but always by weight and measure. 
The weights and measures are to be those 
which we have brought you and exhibit 
before your eyes. Here also is a signet with 
which we propose to seal up your store- 
houses and granaries after taking from them 
what we require, as by this means you will 
be able to distinguish our work from that 
of common robbers. Regarding the slaves 
who in future shall escape from you to our 
camp, I shall rigidly investigate the causes 
of each man's running away, weigh his 



so The Background 

story carefully, and after submitting his 
case to an unbiased examination, if he be 
found to have suffered injustice at your 
hands, proving that he has been treated 
wrongly by you, I shall protect him. If on 
the contrary the runaway slave shall be 
found not to have had a sufficient cause, I 
shall return him to his master/' 

The great slave, the man who had run 
away from slavery, recognized and upheld 
the institution. The conditions imposed by 
him were agreed to by the Chian authorities, 
for they were not so situated as to refuse. 
During the existence of the stipulations, 
and for many years afterward, the condi- 
tions were carried out. 

The king of the mountaineers took wHat 
stores they wished, but always by weight 
and measure according to the compact. 
The country was rid of robbers, with which 
it had been infested ; Drimakos becoming 
the great robber would allow no competi- 
tion. 

When this wonderful man became old he 



The Background 51 

undertook to delegate his powers to a young 
man — a runaAvay — who had been kidnapped 
when a child and sold to one of the mer- 
chants of Chios. 

The Chians, however, were beginning to 
be restless after their many years of subju- 
gation by their former slave, and offered a 
large reward for the head of the great insur- 
gent who resolved, now that he was feeble, 
upon a plan ingenious in itself but as disas- 
trous as it was ingenious. So he said to this 
young man : '' Thou art child and son and 
all that to me is dear. I have lived out my 
span. I have lived long enough ; but thou 
art still young and hast blood and hope 
and sprightliness, and there is much before 
thee. Thou shalt become a good and brave 
man. 

*' Son, the city of the Chians is offering 
to him that bringeth them my head a sum 
of money and promising him his freedom. 
Therefore thy duty is to cut off my head, take 
it to them, receive thy reward, return home 
to thy fatherland and be happy." 



52 The Background 

This was a very revolting idea to the 
young man, but his old friend, having re- 
solved, would not change his plan ; and so 
he allowed himself to be persuaded, and the 
great slave king, laying his head upon the 
block, the youth became the executioner, 
then took the head to the city and returned 
to his home with wealth and renown. 

But the loss of Drimakos left his old as- 
sociates without his guiding hand, and they 
became pillagers and robbers and pirates. 
Then the Chians saw the error of their 
ways, for Drimakos had held freebooters 
under control and the treachery of the 
Chians in securing the death of Drimakos 
brought them under their old difficulties 
and they recalled the words of prophecy 
which he had uttered and his inspired state- 
ment that the cause of the poor slaves had 
been favored by the gods who were angered. 
When this memorial feeling took possession, 
kindling to a high degree, they erected a 
mausoleum over Drimakos's grave and he 
himself was worshiped as a hero. After- 



The Background 53 

ward mention of the ghost of Drimakos 
through the superstitions of the people be- 
came a shibboleth with the Chians. 

Oh, those ages, the ages back of the 
Christian Era, were full of these great re- 
bellions, strikes, insurrections, whatever 
one chooses to call them, but all growing out 
of labor conditions. 

There was the great rebellion in Spain, 
B. c. 149, when the massacre of Galba and the 
dramatic life of Viriathus revealed the 
cruelties which labor suffered. Time will 
not permit even the briefest relation of this 
wonderful story, nor of the civil war in 
Sicily when one of the greatest labor re- 
bellions or strikes on record in any country 
or at any time occurred, all growing out of 
the horrid conditions regulating labor. 

Nor can I speak of the bloody strikes in 
Asia Minor, even in close proximit}^ to Pal- 
estine and those immortal scenes that grew 
out of Nazareth and Jerusalem a few years 
after them. These scenes give a deeper hue 
to the darkness of the background of the 



54 The Background 

battle of Enna where all but a fragment of 
20,000 workmen were killed or taken 
prisoners. 

Then there is also the story of Sparta- 
cus who led the strike of the gladiators. 
The grievances which led to the trouble are 
probably better known to-day than those 
underlying any of the great battles which 
labor has fought. Poetry and romance and 
history have all combined to make the 
story of the gladiators under Spartacus, 
about 74 B. c, familiar even to school-chil- 
dren. But the real history of the rebellion 
led by Spartacus in the revolt against the 
cruel regulations reveals the fact that 
Spartacus to all intents and purposes 
was a working man. He rose to his great 
renown through his own genius, and 
through the organizations which he inspired 
he carried on his great work for human 
liberty and decent conditions. 

He was himself a slave. At fifteen years 
of age, holding the head of his dying father, 
chained and nailed to the trunk of a tree, 



The Background 55 

he was conjured to avenge that father's 
death, and he then and there vowed venge- 
ance upon his powerful enemies ; this feel- 
ing of vengeance, allied to the cruelties to 
which he had been subjected, gave him the 
mind and the skill and the strength to 
carry out his promises. 

He had been a shepherd in Thracian 
Greece ; he was a giant ; he was young ; he 
had all the elements of a great leader. He 
fought many battles — at least twelve — be- 
fore the final tragedy, in which great num* 
bers of the brave men with Spartacus were 
slaughtered, the story of which will never 
die ; and in the last of which the body 
of Spartacus was so completely cut to 
pieces that it was never found. Florus 
says he died like a Roman emperor. 

In that last battle the Romans gave no 
quarter. Sixty thousand working men gave 
their lives in a defeat which caused the 
chains of labor to be more securely riveted 
for ages. 

Spartacus fought for principle, as others 



56 The Background 

had fought, with slaves for soldiers. In 
the different wars of the slaves' rebellion 
against the Roman system more than one 
million perished. 

Many other references might be given to 
show not only the vastness, but the savagery 
of labor's battles in the far past. The 
evolution growing out of those conditions 
has been slow, so slow that it can hardly be 
recognized even when we compare modern 
with ancient times. The brutalities take 
different form, but they are there. The 
darkness does not disappear, even when rec- 
ognizing the magnificent results which 
Christianity brought out of those old strug- 
gles to which I have alluded ; but these 
results teach us that growth is there, that 
the evolution has been and is sure ; that 
the auguries of the present based on those 
magnificent auguries of two thousand years 
ago are bringing an age which cannot be 
compared with any other, and that the 
golden age is in the future and not in the 
past. 



II 

IN MEDIEVAL AND MODERN 
INDUSTRY 



II 

IN MEDIAEVAL AND MODERN INDUSTRY 

It would be interesting to dwell at greater 
length upon the ancient background of 
labor. There were eight centuries during 
which Rome had but two classes of people, 
masters and slaves ; if we could tell the 
story of the latter we should get the story 
of the Roman workmen, for that empire, 
with its patricians arrogant and ostenta- 
tious, found it necessary to unite the patri- 
cian and the rich plebeian in order to over- 
come the opposition to the welfare and the 
rights of the working classes. Those of 
the latter who were not legal slaves were 
oftentimes in a worse condition than the 
slaves themselves. 

But we must pass rapidly to mediaeval 
and modern times. 

All through the centuries up to and in- 
cluding the eighteenth, the working people 



6o In Mediaeval and Modern Industry 

were slaves or serfs, and their condition was 
not much better than their forebears' prior 
to that period ; nor did they have the in- 
telligence of the insurrectionists in the dif- 
ferent countries prior to the Christian Era. 

The workman was stagnated, as was so- 
ciety generally, and although out of the 
middle ages there came some of the grand- 
est inventions the world has seen, in the 
development of science, in mathematics and 
medicine, yet in other directions, the world 
practically stood still. 

The peasantry all through those centuries 
lived in slavish servility, but the people — 
the bourgeois — were, in the later centuries, 
gaining something in civilization and in 
political power. There were corporations 
and organizations among artisans and mer- 
chants, and these became powerful in their 
methods of defense against the oppression 
of the nobles. They were prolific in France, 
but they never attained similar power or 
position to those in Belgium, Holland or 
England. 



In Mediaeval and Modern Industry 61 

These organizations were often as auto- 
cratic as the very power against which they 
aimed their forces, for the workmen did not 
hesitate, trained as they were under despotic 
rule, to reproduce some of the worst features 
of the aristocracy ; but when these features 
were announced and carried out as far as 
possible by the nobles, the workmen did 
not fail to denounce them. 

There were many features of these unions 
coincident with those with which we are 
entirely familiar. They fixed the hours 
and the days for working ; they allowed or 
restricted output by regulating the size of 
articles to be made, the quality of the 
stuffs used in their manufacture and even 
the price at which they were to be sold.^ 
They prohibited night work, except in 
the production of funeral articles, which 
might be made at night ; but beyond and 
above all these stringent regulations the 
trade unions of those days taught industry 
and business integrity. They became pow- 

» ''The atory of Manual Labor," by John C. Simonds. 



62 In Mediaeval and Modem Industry 

erful and they worked strenuously to secure 
the advancement of honest labor and to 
bring about the great and resistless up- 
heaval of the French revolution of 1789, 
and the abrogation of the rights and privi- 
leges of the nobles and the clergy. 
"^^ Among the strikes which occurred during 
the middle ages reference should be made to 
the disputes between masters and '' valets," 
that among the shearmen in 1350, and that 
of the weavers alien in 1362. There was at 
that time, or at least there is much evidence 
to show that there was, a separate journey- 
man class having various interests quite 
distinct in some of their essential features 
from the interests of the master artisans. 

There occurred combinations, the result 
of agreements existing among the men 
themselves that they would not work ex- 
cept under certain circumstances and con- 
ditions. Our modern strikes find examples 
for their methods in these very agreements, 
for they gave the fullest power to the officers 
of their associations to deal with all cases of 



In Mediaeval and Modern Industry 63 

grievance or dissatisfaction which might 
arise. An extract from these agreements is 
exceedingly interesting in discussing how 
strikes arise and the causes of disputes. 

'^ Whereas, heretofore, if there was any 
dispute between a master in the trade and 
his man (vadlett), such a man has been 
wont to go to all the men within the city 
of the same trade ; and then, by covin and 
conspiracy between them made, they would 
order that no one among them should work 
or serve his own master until the said mas- 
ter and his servant or man had come to an 
agreement ; by reason whereof the masters 
in the said trade have been in great trouble, 
and the people left unserved ; it is ordained, 
that from henceforth, if there be any dis- 
pute moved between any master and his 
man in the trade, such dispute shall be set- 
tled by the wardens of the trade. And if 
the man who shall have offended, or shall 
have badly behaved himself toward his 
master, will not submit to be tried before 
the said wardens, then such man shall be 



64 In Mediaeval and Modern Industry 

arrested by a sergeant of the Chamber, at 
the suit of the said wardens, and brought 
before the mayor and aldermen ; and before 
them let him be punished at their discre- 
tion." 

Of course after the Black Death there 
was a great increase in wages, but also much 
difficulty between employers and employees. 
Men were not content even with the increased 
wages, and this discontent with remunera- 
tion caused many of the difficulties. Jour- 
neymen became masters of the situation 
temporarily. Their movement did not re- 
sult in entire defeat, but it did result in the 
removal of the power to determine wages 
from the individual master to the craft as a 
whole, or to the wardens as its representa- 
tives.^ 

Some of the difficulties arose from very 
curious causes, but the strikes were in all 
respects like the strikes with which we are 
acquainted. In England the Peasants' Re- 
volt of 1381 caused much disturbance 

* Ashley, " Economic History " Vol, 1, 



In Mediaeval and Modem Industry 65 

among the journeymen in the towns quite 
like the ferment that existed among the 
villeins in the country places. The jour- 
neymen felt aware that they would never 
become masters, and they caught the idea 
that their independence and improvement 
must result from their own action ; and 
this action was jointly with the peasants, 
resulting in public demonstrations and re- 
fusals to work — that is, strikes — as the most 
powerful means of securing better compen- 
sation, better conditions, etc. These were 
old methods, however, and the very same 
that occurred thirty years before, to which 
I have just alluded. The Peasants' Revolt, 
as such, occurred June 10, 1381, and it was 
quite extensive, being simultaneous from 
the coast of Kent to Scarborough and all 
through the eastern towns. 

The rioters took Norwich and stormed 
the Castle ; the thriving artisans of London 
shared in the insurrection. On the west of 
England all the country from Hampshire 
to Lancashire was involved. The immedi- 



66 In Mediaeval and Modern Industry 

ate occasion was the outrage committed on 
Watt Tyler's daughter and the vengeance 
which he undertook on the criminal, al- 
though many ascribed the difficulty to the 
poll tax. But the cause lay deeper than 
any personal grievance or any personal out- 
rage, because the uprising was concerted 
and related more particularly to the wages 
of labor than to any other cause. 

Curiously enough the serfs had organized 
their trade unions, and they were united in 
their resistance to the law and in their 
strenuous demands for increased wages ; yet 
Tyler's case had something to do with the 
Peasants' Revolt. 

The conditions of villeinage and general 
dissatisfaction must be considered as con- 
tributing largely to the revolt; and yet, 
strange to say, Kent County led the insur- 
rectionary movement, although there were 
no serfs in that county, and their action can 
be accounted for only through their sym- 
pathy with the serfs where they existed. 
In other words, the Kent County people — 



In Mediaeval and Modern Industry 67 

artisans, peasants — entered upon a sym- 
pathetic strike. 

Just seventy years later Cade's Revolt 
found its starting point in Kent. Kent 
was active in all the leading events which 
took place prior to the days of Cromwell. 

Under Tyler, in 1381, the insurrectionists 
marched to London, occupied Black Heath 
and South worth and forced Sir John Man- 
ley to approach the king and lay before him 
their grievances ; and then they crossed the 
bridge and entered London. The councils 
of that city were so divided, the interests and 
sympathies so varied, that the city was dis- 
tracted. Then the insurrectionists became 
rioters and John of Gaunt's new palace was 
burned and the Hospital of St. John sacked, 
while on the last days of their occupancy 
they made London their camping-ground, 
probably in Smithfield. 

Then came a night of terror, during 
which the young king, his mother, his two 
half-brothers, the Archbishop of Canter- 
bury, and some of the nobles found lodging 



68 In Mediaeval and Modem Industry 

in the tower, but the garrison was a slender 
one and on' the next morning the insurgents 
approaching the tower informed the king 
that he must grant them a conference or 
the tower would be attacked, captured and 
all that were in it slain. The affrighted 
king left the tower and appointed a con- 
ference to take place at Mile End, but 
no sooner had he left it than the insurgents 
took possession of it, seized the Archbishop 
and others and forthwith put them to death. 

Tyler was no doubt aided by many in 
London who were dissatisfied with this, that 
or the other condition, and probably by 
some old soldiers of the French wars. 

The king met the rioters and on his de- 
manding the occasion of the conference 
they answered : '^ We will that you make 
us free forever, ourselves, our heirs, and our 
lands, and that we be called no more bond 
or so reputed," and the king without delay 
assented, bidding the mob to return to their 
homes while the charters for their new con- 
dition were to be carried to them. The 



In Mediaeval and Modern Industry 69 

morning following Tyler occupied Smith- 
field in force. 

The king was desirous of escaping from 
London and was even attempting to make 
his way out of the city. This was strange, 
for the whole country was in insurrection. 
The king found the peasants everywhere 
under arms and while at St. Bartholomew's 
Abbey undertook a parley. Tyler as he 
saw him commanded his followers to fall 
back, he himself advancing to meet the 
king, but Walworth, the mayor, slew Tyler. 
This enraged the crowd, but the king, braver 
than some of his associates, appeased them, 
riding boldly to the front and announcing 
to them that he was their monarch and 
their friend. Then the rebels returned to 
London and soon dispersed. 

On returning to his mother, who was still 
in the tower, and being congratulated by 
her on his safe return, he assured her that 
he had well-nigh lost but actually gained 
his crown on that memorable morning at 
Smithfield. 



yo In Mediaeval and Modem Industry 

There were many more features, riotous, 
tragical, disastrous, which accompanied the 
Peasants' Revolt. They need not be re- 
lated. The insurrection was over in a 
week, and then, as in our OAvn time, after 
the tragedy the authorities began to study 
the situation, to discover if possible the 
causes of the insurrection and how it was 
organized and developed. 

There were all sorts of combinations, re- 
sulting in insurrections of greater or less 
magnitude, involving citizens of various 
classes and degrees, following the events of 
1381, and they are sufficient to indicate the 
existence of strikes in mediaeval times and 
to establish their comparison with the 
strikes of our own times. 

As additional mediaeval experiences we 
may cite the Peasants' War, which was the 
rebellion of the peasants of Southern and 
Central Germany in 1525. It may be, and 
probably it is, true that the Reformation of- 
fered the occasion but not the cause of this 
revolt. It was intimately associated with 



In Mediaeval and Modern Industry 7 1 

the Anabaptist uprising which took place 
early in the sixteenth century. The Ana- 
baptists sprang up at about the time of the 
Reformation, but when or where they first 
appeared, whether in Germany or Switzer- 
land, it is difficult, if not impossible, to 
determine ; but they sprang up like rank 
vegetation. Their growth is explained from 
the fact that the seed was in the ground, 
and this explains the growth of all labor re- 
volts and of all communistic attempts. 

In 1521 they appeared at Zwickau and 
later, under Thomas Miinzer, took part in 
and shared the sanguinary strife of the 
Peasants' War. Thus religion and labor 
conditions joined hands and Miinzer and his 
followers claimed a divine commission. 

The Anabaptists were defeated near 
Muhlhausen and their leaders put to death. 
It 1533 they concentrated their operations 
at Miinster and, as in all such movements, 
fanaticism ruled, but after a sanguinary 
strife of fifteen months the so-called king- 
dom of Anabaptists perished. 



72 In Mediaeval and Modem Industry 

The story is a cruel one. Throughout the 
most flourishing districts of the country 
travelers were horror-struck with the sight 
of heaps of dead bodies and of smoking 
ruins. Fifty thousand peasants perished 
and almost everywhere the people lost what 
little liberty they had previously possessed. 

The revolt was primarily caused by the 
actual and burdensome grievances of the 
peasants, but they sought to rectif}^ these 
by a process which has always led to ten- 
fold greater evils — plunder, rapine, murder, 
and all the excesses of infuriated hordes. 

Read the story of the Reformation in all 
its bearings if you wish something possess- 
ing all the charm of romance and a truth 
stranger than any fiction. 

Contemporaneously with the Peasants* 
War in Germany and the Anabaptist revolt 
culminated those mighty communistic move- 
ments in France, begun before the opening 
of the tenth centur}^ and resulting in the 
almost entire destruction of feudalism. 
They were ** the first attack of that mortal 



In Mediaeval and Modern Industry 73 

illness which eventually was to destroy the 
system." 

We learn from Paul Lacombe that no 
epoch was ever more frightful for the poor 
peasant ; with no hope, since he owned no 
land and had no chance of becoming rich ; 
with none of the comforts or even necessi- 
ties of existence, life was to him a perpetual 
agony. We must understand that around 
the castle of each feudal lord was generally 
a large palisaded enclosure, built to receive 
the serfs of the domain and their cattle, at 
the approach of the enemy. To live in his 
hut like a hare in his hollow, with his ear 
always on the alert ; to cultivate out of 
season, and against his will, barren soil ; at 
the slightest sound of danger to take ref- 
uge in the Manorial enclosure ; to encamp 
there in want and fear, hardly sheltered and 
not at all fed, a prey to epidemic diseases ; 
later to go out starved and trembling to 
see his plot of ground and harvest in 
cinders ; to repair the damage and begin 
again, with the prospect of another similar 



74 Itt Medidevdt and Modem Industiy 

catastrophe ; such was the life of a peasant 
under the feudal system of France and of 
other countries. The poor creatures felt it 
an impossibility that humanity could sur- 
vive under such a system. And it is not 
surprising that insurrections, revolts, and 
the battles of labor came to be general, ex- 
hausting, tragical. 

Then occurred the establishment of the 
French communes which were born in the 
holiest of holy causes. Under the prevail- 
ing conditions they became the most active 
and determining element in the processes 
of French civilization. The revolts, the 
massacres, the stupendous crimes, the 
wonderful sacrifices, the heroic deeds, the 
patriotic martyrdoms, and the demagogical 
stratagems which attended their birth and 
their christening into French history, have 
all been repeated in later times, but with 
varying purposes. They were the out- 
growth of the conditions that surrounded 
the working man. The Revolution of '89 
was inaugurated through and by their 



In Mediaeval and Modem Industry 75 

influence, and that Revolution swept 
away the privileges of the nobility and 
of the clergy ; and it swept away much 
more, but it left something for future 
generations which was good. 

During the Revolution of 1848 these 
principles were reinvoked and the attempt 
was made to make labor the basis of the 
new order. 

How many strikes or labor revolts 
occurred during the period from the 
beginning of the Christian Era to the 
middle of the eighteenth century, other 
than the great rebellions well known in 
history, it is impossible to state. His- 
torians have been as negligent during this 
period as they were during the period prior 
to it. Whatever revolts there were, however, 
wherever they occurred, in what numbers, 
and with what results, they were the back- 
ground that the middle ages formed for 
our own period. 

I said in my first lecture that it was 
generally supposed that strikes were one 



7^ In Mediaeval and Modern Industry 

of the direct products of modern industry. 
It is true that probably more strikes and 
lockouts and labor disturbances generally 
have occurred during the last twenty-five 
or thirty years than in all the previous 
period of history since the dawn of the 
Christian Era, but they have been of a 
different character and on the whole have 
been peaceful and not tragical ; although 
here and there, as we shall see in the next 
lecture, tragedy has played an important 
part in the conduct of the battles. 

It cannot be without interest to take a 
cursory glance over this immediate past, 
in order to discover if possible whether 
the phenomena of strikes and lockouts are 
novel in our present industrial history, or 
whether they had their beginnings in times 
and under conditions which have passed ; 
whether they are the result of the powerful 
organizations of working men, or whether 
they are the outgrowth of discontent and 
dissatisfaction with existing industrial con- 
ditions, or the natural result of industrial 



In Mediaeval and Modem Industry 77 

development and the development of in- 
telligence. 

While it may be truly said that the 
strike, as a method pursued by working 
men to obtain the redress of real or fancied 
grievances, has assumed importance only 
during the last generation, it is true that 
the strike, as I have shown, is not a new 
weapon even in this country in the hand 
of the laborer. 

Careful investigation of records shows 
that it is reasonably certain that a strike 
occurred among the bakers of New York 
city as early as 1741, for in the trial of 
journeymen cordwainers in the city of 
New York in 1810, counsel for the defense 
stated that he had ascertained the facts 
relative to the occurrence in 1741. 

There was also a series of strikes among 
the boot- and shoemakers of Philadelphia, 
beginning in 1796; and again in 1798 
there was a '' turnout," as a strike was then 
called, ordered by the journeymen shoe- 
makers of this city. The cause of this 



78 In Mediaeval and Modem Industry 

was a demand for an increase of wages, the 
same as in New York in 1741. This strike 
lasted ten weeks and was partly successful, 
although the next year the journeymen 
shoemakers turned out to resist a demand 
made by the masters for a reduction of 
wages. 

In New York, in November, 1803, oc- 
curred what is commonly known as the 
Sailors' Strike. This has been considered 
generally by writers as the first strike in 
the United States, but the facts just cited 
indicate the contrary. The sailors formed 
in a body, marched around the city and 
compelled other seamen who were employed 
at the old rates to leave their ships and join 
the strike. The strikers were pursued and 
dispersed by the constables, who arrested 
their leaders and lodged them in jail; so 
this strike failed. 

The shoemakers, always the leaders in 
agitation, in those days as in revolutionary 
times, turned out again in 1805 here in 
Philadelphia. They demanded an increase 



In Mediaeval and Modem Industry 79 

of wages. This particular strike lasted six 
or seven weeks and was unsuccessful. The 
strikers were tried for conspiracy and the 
men convicted, but I have not been able to 
learn whether sentence was passed upon 
them. 

There occurred a strike among the cord- 
wainers in the city of New York in 1809. 
This strike is memorable only because there 
originated in it some of the terminology 
which enters into all strike literature of our 
time. The proprietors took their work at 
the time of this strike to other shops and by 
this stratagem defeated the strikers ; but 
the action being discovered a general turn- 
out was ordered by the Journeymen Cord- 
wainers' Association against all the master 
workmen of the city, nearly two hundred 
men being engaged in the strike. 

At that time, November, 1809, a stoppage 
of work in one shop by the journeymen was 
called a '' strike " ; a general stoppage in all 
shops in a trade was known as a *' general 
turnout," and a member of a journeymen's 



8o In Mediaeval and Modern Industry 

association who did not keep his obliga- 
tions to the organization, that is, a man who 
would work while a strike was on, was de- 
nominated a '' scab." This is the first time, 
so far as I have been able to discover, that 
this word was applied to one who would 
work while his comrades were on strike. 

An interesting strike occurred in 1817 at 
Medford, in the State of Massachusetts, 
when one Thacher Magoun, a shipbuilder, 
determined to abolish the grog privilege 
customar}^ at that time, drink being fur- 
nished to workmen at certain intervals dur- 
ing the day. Upon notice being given by 
Mr. Magoun that no liquor should be used 
in his shipyard, the words '' No Rum " were 
written upon nearly every clapboard of the 
workshop and upon each timber of the 
yard. Some of the men refused to work 
but finally gave in, and a ship was built 
without the use of liquor in any form. I 
do not remember that the temperance ques- 
tion or the use or the prohibition of the use 
of liquor ever appeared as a cause in any 



In Mediaeval and Modem Industry 81 

other American strike, nearly all those oc- 
curring prior to 1880 being for an increase 
in wages or to prevent a reduction, or to 
establish some rule the working people 
thought necessary, or to prevent some rule 
to which they were opposed. 

During this period the year 1835 must 
be considered as exceptional, for then oc- 
curred not so very many strikes, but some 
of considerable importance. Five hundred 
mechanics in Boston struck for the ten-hour 
system, and this was the case in twenty 
mills in Paterson, New Jersey. The stone- 
cutters of New York struck not only for an 
increase of wages, but for the regulation of 
piece w^ork. In May of that year the 
Schuylkill merchants pledged themselves 
not to employ laborers unless they would 
agree to work by the day and from sunrise 
to sunset. A contemporary writer, com- 
menting upon this lockout, said : '' All 
combinations are wrong, but if on one part, 
they must be on the other." 

In the same month there was a serious 



82 In Mediaeval and Modern Industry 

strike in Philadelphia coal yards. This 
was for a reduction in the hours of labor ; 
and in June several trades in Philadelphia 
met and offered an imposing manifestation 
in favor of the change in hours. They 
formed a procession with a large white ban- 
ner bearing the motto '' From 6 to 6," but 
their conduct was peaceable. In the same 
month occurred other strikes of house car- 
penters and brick-layers, lamp and chande- 
lier employees, together with the tin plate 
and sheet iron workers. In some of these 
eases the demands were promptly complied 
with. In the same month also the journey- 
men cordwainers again took the field, and 
the strike committee reported that nearly 
one hundred and forty employers acceded to 
the demands. Then in the same month the 
working women, tailoresses, seamstresses, 
binders, folders, etc., undertook to formu- 
late a schedule of prices and asked advances. 
The master bookbinders considered the 
cause of these women whose claims were 
founded alike on justice and humanity, 



In Mediaeval and Modern Industty 83 

and they resolved that $3.00 per week was 
the least amount of wages that could be 
offered by any one possessed of practical 
principles of humanity, and that less wages 
were unjust, inhuman, and oppressive. 

There were not many strikes during the 
Civil War. People were too busy, too ex- 
cited, too much interested in greater affairs. 
The decade of the '70's was more turbulent, 
coal miners, railroad employees and others 
entering into great contests for an increase 
of wages and an improvement in conditions. 

The greatest strike of that period was that 
of July, 1877, on the Pennsylvania Rail- 
road. This strike will be dealt with more 
specifically in the succeeding lecture, as it is 
one of the historic strikes of the country. 

Taking the whole period then, from 1741 
to 1880, my investigations show that there 
were 1,491 strikes and lockouts, and that of 
these 1,089 related to wages and 278 only to 
other causes ; that of the whole number 316 
succeeded, 154 were compromised, 583 
failed entirely, while the results in 438 



84 In Mediaeval and Modem Indastty 

cases cannot be ascertained. It was shown 
by a report of the tenth census that in 1880 
there were 610 strikes. In no year prior to 
that was there any considerable number of 
strikes, certainly not more than 80 or 90. 
From that year, 1880, we have a very ac- 
curate record down to December 31, 1900. 
The facts for subsequent years are not yet 
ready for use, but I apprehend that when 
they are known w^e shall find that there 
has been a decrease in the total number. 
When we anal3^ze the course of strikes 
during the twenty years from January 1, 
1881, to December 31, 1900, we shall be as- 
tonished at the magnitude of the disturb- 
ances in the aggregate. 

In 1881 there were but 471 strikes, while 
in 1900 there were 1,779. The largest num- 
ber occurred in 1890, when there were 1,833. 
These figures signify but little in them- 
selves, but when we learn that the number 
of establishments involved in these strikes 
during the period under discussion was 
117,509 we begin to appreciate the impor- 



In Mediaevdl and Modern Industry 85 

tance or influence for good or ill these strikes 
exerted. During that period there were 
6,105,694 employees thrown out of employ- 
ment. The largest number was in 1884, 
when over 660,000 people were thrown out 
of work. In addition to these strikes there 
occurred during the same twenty years 
1,005 lockouts, involving nearly 10,000 es- 
tablishments and throwing out of employ- 
ment over 1,000,000 people. In the strikes 
90 per cent, of the employees thrown out 
were males and 10 per cent, females, while 
in the lockouts 80i per. cent were males and 
191 per cent, females. And now we learn 
the power that the organizations exert in 
these later times as in the ancient periods, 
for of the whole number of strikes in the 
twenty years in question nearly 631 per 
cent, were ordered by organizations, and of 
the lockouts 17 per cent, by associations of 
employers. The average duration of all the 
strikes was nearly twenty-four days and of 
the lockouts over ninety-seven days. 

The successes of the strikes is a most in- 



86 In Mediaeval and Modem Industry 

teresting feature, and the facts usually dis- 
turb the theories of those who have not 
studied the subject. I have heard it as- 
serted by intelligent men that nearly all 
strikes fail, yet the facts show that of the 
whole number occurring during the twenty 
years, nearly 51 per cent, succeeded, while 
over 13 per cent, succeeded partly, and but 
36 per cent, failed. These proportions are 
quite as true for the lockouts, for nearly 
51 per cent, succeeded and nearly 43 per 
cent, failed. 

It is more interesting still to learn what 
became of the strikes ordered by the labor 
organizations. Here again we find similar 
proportions, for of those strikes ordered by 
such organizations nearly 53 per cent, suc- 
ceeded and 331 per cent, failed, while nearly 
14 per cent, succeeded in part. Of the 
strikes not ordered by organizations — those 
which were inaugurated by temporary con- 
certed movements, 351 per cent, succeeded 
and more than 55 per cent, failed. 

The concentration of strikes in certain 



In Mediaeval and Modem Industry 87 

localities offers some very serious lessons 
not only for the economist, but for the 
sociologist. 

Taking those in Illinois, Massachusetts, 
New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, we find 
that in these five states, which contain 
nearly 75 per cent, of all the manufacturing 
establishments involved in strikes during 
the twenty years, and almost 85 per cent, of 
all the establishments involved in lockouts, 
the strikes averaged in the different years 
very nearly 58 per cent, of all the strikes 
occurring in 1892 and over 87 per cent, of 
those occurring in 1897. But it may not 
be unreasonable to assume that after all the 
proportion of strikes occurring in these five 
states was not undue, relative to the capital 
invested and the number of establishments 
in these states. 

The losses resulting from all these strikes 
cannot be accurately ascertained, but they 
have been ascertained with sufiicient accu- 
racy to indicate their vastness from an eco- 
nomic point of view. 



88 In Mediaeval and Modern Industry 

It is fairly easy to calculate or even to 
ascertain the wage losses of the employees, 
and the assistance to employees by labor 
organizations while their members were on 
strike is the subject of very positive infor- 
mation. 

The wage loss during the twenty years 
amounted to nearly $258,000,000 and the 
money the organizations spent in assisting 
their striking fellows was over $16,000,000, 
a sum sufficiently large to have enabled 
these men to establish cooperative plants, 
or to carry out various plans for improve- 
ment and advancement. The losses of the 
employers has been set at nearly $132,000,- 
000. This, again, is the subject of fairly 
accurate calculation, but no method can 
ascertain the losses of society at large, or of 
thousands of individuals discommoded, hin- 
dered in their occupations and otherwise 
interfered with. 

In lockouts the employees lost nearly 
$49,000,000 and paid out nearly $3,500,000 
while the employers lost nearly $20,000,000. 



In Mediaeval and Modern Industry 89 

The total loss resulting from industrial 
disturbances during the twenty years then, 
to employees alone was nearly $307,000,000 ; 
and the total loss to establishments or firms 
in both strikes and lockouts during the 
twenty years was nearly $143,000,000, or a 
total direct loss to both employees and em- 
ployers of nearly $450,000,000. 

Now, what were the causes for all these 
battles ? It is comparatively easy to ascer- 
tain the alleged causes and where the causes 
are not clear, to ascertain the occasion of 
the conflicts. But that other, deeper, un- 
derlying ps3^chological basis which must 
have entered into all these disturbances 
cannot be ascertained. 

Many of the strikes were honest and 
honestly conducted for legitimate causes ; 
many for trivial causes and those which 
did not warrant an economic rebellion ; 
but others — and we can never know 
the proportion — were the result of the 
desire of ambitious men to exhibit the 
reason for their existence officially, and 



go In Mediaeval and Modem Industry 

to show to their unions that they had 
the power to coerce their employers. 
When such psychological reasons ex- 
isted they were kept in the background, 
and only the appeal to the men that they 
were underpaid, or oppressed, or working 
under some conditions which were not 
agreeable offered as the real cause for de- 
claring a strike. 

But doing the best one can, taking only 
those material causes which have been 
alleged and ignoring by force of necessity 
the psychological aspects of the case, we 
can reach certain conclusions that are valu- 
able in their sociological and economic sense. 

Of the whole number of strikes oc- 
curring in the twenty years, nearly 21 per 
cent, were ordered for a direct increase 
of wages; 111 per cent, for an increase 
of wages combined with a demand for a 
reduction of hours, and about the same 
proportion for a reduction of hours, while 
something over 7 per cent, of the strikes 
were against a reduction of wages. 



In Mediaeval and Modem Industry 91 

It is true, then, that 58^ per cent, of all 
the strikes occurring in this country during 
the twenty years involved rested upon the 
question of wages and the hours of labor. 
The balance were for a variety of reasons, 
such as sympathetic strikes against the 
employment of non-union men, although 
this number was very small ; only 2\ per 
cent, of the whole for the adoption of new 
scales ; for the recognition of the union \l 
per cent. ; for the enforcement of union 
rules against some particular system like 
the task system f per cent., etc., etc., but 
these latter are unimportant in the dis- 
cussion of causes. In all there were 
twenty leading causes and they ac- 
count for nearly 77 per cent, of all the 
strikes in the country, and based on 
these leading causes nearly 50 per cent, 
of the strikes succeeded, over 13 per 
cent, succeeded in part, while 37 per cent, 
failed. 

You may be curious to know whether 
these disturbances are indigenous with 



92 In Mediaeval and Modem Industry 

us in the United States, or whether other 
countries suffer in the same way. 

Quite a number of European countries 
collect regularly the statistics of strikes 
and from their reports the facts can be 
ascertained. Take Austria, for instance, 
and we find that the total number of 
strikes for the ten years from 1891 to 1900 
was 2,178, of which number 445 succeeded 
and 936 failed, the balance succeeding 
partly. Labor organizations there have 
the same influence as here, for of the 
whole number 653 were ordered by them. 
There were 13,636 establishments involved, 
while over 456,000 strikers took part. 
The causes were similar, and in proportion 
as well, to those occurring in this country. 

The facts for Denmark are meagre and 
apply only to three years, 1897, 1898, 1899, 
but in these years there were 356 strikes 
involving 7,312 establishments. 

France, in the eleven years from 1890 to 
1900 inclusive, experienced 5,112 strikes, 
with a total number of 1,147,200 strikers 



In Mediaeval and Modern Industry 93 

and 18,782,418 days lost by the employees. 
Of the whole number of strikes 1,216 suc- 
ceeded and 2,220 failed. 

The German statistics are more meagre 
still and are for only two years, 1899, 1900, 
but the total number of strikes in these 
two years, 2,271, comes close to the 
American standard ; 606 succeeded but 
1,181 failed, while a very large percentage 
was ordered by labor organizations, the 
number being 1,613. The number of 
strikers was 222,141. 

Great Britain has a record of five years, 
from 1899 to 1903 inclusive, during which 
4,526 strikes occurred, 1,815 of them result- 
ing in favor of the strikers, while there were 
over 1,852,000 employees thrown out of 
work. 

Italy is not lagging behind in these 
methods, for between 1879 and 1899 in- 
elusive that country, which is not particu- 
larly a manufacturing country, had 2,483 
strikes involving a total of 623,810 persons 
and a loss of five and a half million days. 



94 In Mediaeval and Modem Industry 

Thus we see that America cannot claim 
to be very much in advance of other coun- 
tries in the methods of her working men in 
attacking their employers. We see so much 
more about our own American battles than 
about those of other countries that we think 
the other countries are at peace, although 
now and then we do read of the longshore- 
men's strike or of the engineers' strike — 
that is a strike of what we should call 
machinists — or of the troubles in the French 
coal mines, or of those of various artisans 
and mechanics in different countries; 
but we waive all the prestige we have 
gained when we contemplate the recent 
strikes of the working people in unhappy 
Russia. 

The question is often asked. What time 
would be required at increased wages to re- 
coup the loss occurring during strikes? 
This of course is an arithmetical question, 
and I was at some pains a few years ago to 
have constructed a table showing the num- 
ber of days required for employees to re- 



In Mediaeval and Modem Industry 95 

cover their wage losses in wholly successful 
strikes for an increase of wages. 

The table looks very much like a table 
of logarithms, but it is instructive in the 
extreme. It was based on 5,443 strikes in 
which the average wages lost per employee 
during the strike was $20.42 and the average 
daily wage gained per employee on account 
of the strike 27 cents. It would take, there- 
fore, summing up all these cases, 76 days on 
the average to recoup the loss occasioned 
by the strike. If we take the cases of 
those employees engaged in strikes that 
were partially successful, we find that the 
average wages lost was $43.34 and the aver- 
age daily gain 12 cents, and that the aver- 
age number of days required to recoup the 
loss was 361. 

Of course the trade unionist would say, 
and does say, '' What of it ? We are battling 
for a principle, and the losses and gains in 
dollars and cents must not be considered." 
The employers also say they are battling for 
a principle and that the losses and gains 



96 In Mediaeval and Modem Industry 

must be considered. Society, the third 
party, and the one most seriously involved 
in any labor strike, says, '' A plague to both 
your houses. We are losing not only in 
money, but in inconvenience, stoppage of 
business and in various directions." Proba- 
bly the truth is not wholly with any one 
of these parties. 

There is a deeper question involved than 
that covered by the alleged cause for which 
a strike is undertaken. 

I said a while ago that the working peo- 
nn^ pie of the middle ages, in fact all along 
after the Christian era to our own age, were 
not as intelligent as those who conducted 
the great revolts in antiquity. I must add 
that the intelligence of the modern work- 
ing man, the man who has inaugurated all 
these conflicts, with the statistics of which 
I have wearied you, is an intelligent being 
that cannot be compared with those of the 
past. He has been taught in the schools 
that he is one of the sovereigns of the land. 
He is a political factor ; he is in large degree 



In Mediaeval and Modern Industry 97 

becoming a social factor. He is certainly 
an important economic factor, and his in- 
telligence leads him to the conclusion that 
this being so, he should have an influence 
in shaping economic conditions. 

Fools do not strike. Were our working 
men everywhere on a par with the serfs of 
the middle ages we should have but few 
labor organizations and but few, if any, 
strikes ; but with the intelligence that he has 
the working man insists that that intelli- 
gence shall be felt. He knows enough now 
to feel his condition and to know that he 
ought to have better conditions, but he 
does not know enough to know how to 
secure them without the brutal auxiliary of 
the strike. 

Macaulay said that the evils of liberty 
were not to be cured by less but by more 
liberty ; so the evils of strikes, whatever 
they are, are not to be overcome by a body of 
less intelligent men, but by a body of more 
intelligent men ; men whose intelligence 
will tell them how to secure results without 



98 In Mediaeval and Modern Industry 

the methods that have prevailed during the 
last quarter of a century. 

Here is our hope, and during the last 
year or two we have seen abundant evi- 
dence of this supplemental or increased in- 
telligence which will preserve the country 
from the strife we so much lament. We 
see in the papers the accounts of the few 
strikes that have occurred during the past 
year and we think the old regime of force 
still exists, but we do not see the vast num- 
ber of difficulties that are arranged be- 
tween employers and employees by the 
practical use of those principles of justice, 
of humanity, that enter into our own relig- 
ious beliefs. 

I shall have more to say of this later on, 
but I wish to caution you here and now 
against any pessimistic conclusion which 
the era of violence I have presented to you 
might induce. 

You may ask with propriety. What is the 
attitude of the courts and of legislatures to- 
ward this great question of strikes and the 



In Mediaevdl and Modern Industry 99 

rights, privileges, and obligations of strikers 
and employers involved in the difficulties ? 

Up to the early part of the nineteenth 
century a strike was considered a conspiracy. 
This doctrine, as derived from the English 
common la,w, was applied here, but is con- 
strued now in a much more liberal way 
than was formerly the case. 

The trial of the journeymen boot- and 
shoemakers of Philadelphia, in 1806, to 
which I have alluded, furnishes an em- 
phatic example. At that trial the recorder 
particularly asserted that '' A combination 
of workmen to raise their wages may be 
considered in a twofold point of view ; one 
is to benefit themselves, the other is to in- 
jure those who do not join their society. 
The rule of law condemns both." 

The development of the doctrine of con- 
spiracy as applied to strikes, or rather the 
growth of conservatism in its application, 
seems to have been sporadic in its character, 
for we find the views of Judge Gibson, as 
stated in the Commonwealth of Pennsyl- 



100 In Mediaeval and Modern Industry 

vania vs. Carlisle, early in 1821, more in 
accordance with modern construction than 
those of other judges who succeeded him. 
The fact appears to be that this doctrine of 
conspiracy was so seldom invoked that it 
was only half understood by some, includ- 
ing the legal and judicial professions, and in 
view of the very few precedents and ad- 
judications of cases involving strikes, the 
decision in each individual case depended 
upon the research and learning of the par- 
ticular judge before whom the case was 
tried. There were not then, and there are 
only partially now, digests or compilations 
of laws, precedents, and adjudications in this 
country relating to the doctrine of conspiracy 
as it affects the right of the employers or 
the employees to combine for an increase of 
wages or for other causes. Some recent 
works have appeared which are of great 
importance and usefulness in the examina- 
tion of such rights. 

As I have stated, the first trial in this 
country for conspiracy to raise wages oc- 



In Mediaeval and Modern Industry loi 

curred in 1741, when the journeymen 
bakers were charged with a conspiracy in 
refusing to bake until their wages were 
raised. They were tried and convicted, but 
what the sentence was the records do not 
show. 

The earliest trial of this character which 
has been fully reported and of which the 
record is available was that already alluded 
to, of the journeymen boot- and shoemakers 
of Philadelphia, in 1806, before the mayor's 
court of this city. The indictment against 
eight defendants was that they had con- 
spired against the peace and welfare of the 
commonwealth to fix wages and prices, and 
to do those things the court thought did 
interfere with the dignity and the peace of 
the State. A great deal of testimony was 
taken, one man stating that for several 
years he had lost as much as $4,000 annu- 
ally from his inability to fill his contracts, 
owing to the refusal of the journeymen's 
association to allow its members to work in 
his shop with men who did not belong to 



102 In Medidevat and Modem Industry 

that organization. It also appeared that 
workmen had been threatened and even 
severely beaten for working against the 
orders of the association, and that the mod- 
ern system of boycotting was in full opera- 
tion. 

The trial is an exceedingly interesting 
one, as showing the attitude of the courts 
of that day. The jury found the defend- 
ants guilty of a combination to raise their 
wages and they were fined by the court 
eight dollars each, with the costs of suit, 
and to stand committed until the fine was 
paid. 

The methods pursued by organized labor 
at that early day is evidence of the fact that 
the doctrine of conspiracy was not under- 
stood and that the application of the com- 
mon law rules gathered from English prece- 
dents was unreliable. 

In other cases which occurred during the 
succeeding years of similar character and 
with similar rulings, the jury usually found 
the parties indicted guilty, and they had to 



/ 



In Medideval and Modem Industry 103 

pay the fine or stand committed until they 
did pay it. 

So case after case — not a great number to 
be sure — might be cited to show how judges 
looked upon strikers. In an opinion de- 
livered by Judge Brady, of the city of New 
York, in 1887, in dismissing a writ of habeas 
corpus in a labor case, Judge Brady said : 

" No doubt exists of the right of work- 
men to seek by all possible means an in- 
crease of wages, and all meetings and com- 
binations having that object in view, which 
are not distinguished by violence or threats, 
and are lawful, therefore cannot be reason- 
ably condemned or justly interfered with." 
But Judge Brady took occasion to remark 
that where violence or threats occurred the 
combination should end, for it was a con- 
spiracy pronounced, and justly so, to be 
criminal, and punishable by imprisonment. 
"' The courts everywhere now take this 
view that men have a right to associate to- 
gether peaceably to make their demands 
and to quit the work of their employers, 



h 



104 In Mediaeval and Modem Industry 

reasoning that if one man has a right to 
quit — which no one will deny — two men or 
a thousand men have the same right, and 
it is not conspiracy if they enter upon con- 
certed action ; but when they resort to vio- 
lence or picketing that is not peaceable, or 
any other methods which involve the life 
or the limbs or the safety of others, then the 
participators are amenable under the crimi- 
nal code of the state wherein the action 
takes place. 

Some judges, and those very high, take 
the ground that there is no such thing as 
peaceable picketing to prevent scabs as they 
are called, or non-union men, from enter- 
ing the works of the employer of the 
strikers. Statute law has stepped in with 
a view to guiding the courts as much as 
anything, and of protecting the com- 
munity, but it is onl}^ recently that any 
legislation in this country has been di- 
rected toward strikes, boycotts, and con- 
spiracies relating to wages and other 
demands. In many of the states where 



In Mediaeval and Modem Industry 105 

the common law of England was in force 
men were tried for and often convicted of 
conspiracy for attempts to coerce their 
employers by resorting to strikes and their 
concomitants — the boycotting of non-union 
men and of those who employed them. 
In recent years a number of the states and 
territories have endeavored to make plain 
by statute how far a combination by em- 
ployees to raise or maintain the rate of 
wages, or for kindred purposes, is to be 
protected ; and on the other hand, what 
acts by such combinations, or by indi- 
viduals, will subject the perpetrators to 
punishment under the criminal codes. 
In the absence of specific legislation in 
some states the common law on the subject 
of conspiracy remains in force, and in 
some others where the common law does 
not obtain, the absence of statutory enact- 
ments on the subject may be accounted for 
by the comparative rarity of serious strikes 
or boycotts. V 

The legislation is varied in its character, 



io6 In Mediaeval and Modem Industry 

and, to a certain extent, voluminous, but 
many of the states have, as I have in- 
timated, defined these things and the 
courts are therefore bound to follow the 
statute. I need not cite the states that 
have undertaken to legislate on these 
matters, except to cite one law which may 
be considered as representative of the more 
drastic legislation of the past few years. 
Alabama has a statute which provides that 
" Any person who, by force or threats of 
violence to person or property, prevents, or 
seeks to prevent, another from doing work 
or furnishing materials, or from contracting 
to do work or furnish materials, for or to 
any person engaged in any lawful business, 
or who disturbs, interferes with or prevents 
the peaceable exercise of any lawful in- 
dustry, business or calling by any other 
person, must, on conviction, be fined not 
less than ten nor more than five hundred 
dollars, and may also be imprisoned in the 
county jail," etc. Other legislation may 
be found in the statutes of many states. 



In Mediaeval and Modern Industry 107 

But strikes, and boycotts, and intimida- 
tions cannot be prevented by legislation. 
Those engaged in them may here and there 
be apprehended, tried, and sentenced ; but 
there must be something else than law. 
There must be methods involving elements 
higher than the police force of states in 
order to reach and cure the evil. What- 
ever evils exist, and whatever the unhappy 
results of strikes may have been, they have 
had in varying degree considerable influ- 
ence upon economic affairs in the organiza- 
tions of laborers, in calling attention to 
the relations between employers and em- 
ployees, and in various other directions. 

The complications of a disturbing nature 
are those which appeal to the public, 
although I think that during the last five 
or six years most great strikes have secured 
the interest and sympathy of the public 
and that it is chiefly when the conser- 
vatism of the wiser labor leaders fails to 
prevent abuses and the strikers, inspired 
by temporary successes, see themselves 



io8 In Mediaeval and Modem Industry 

marshaled as a power in the economic 
world, that recklessness takes the place of 
orderly conduct and the public condemns 
the action and the men behind it. 

It is a great problem and cannot be 
solved by courts, by laws, by military force, 
or any drastic measure. 



Ill 

GREAT MODERN BATTLES 



Ill 

GREAT MODERN BATTLES 

The mere statement of facts relating to 
the course of strikes in this country as 
given in the previous lecture conveys but 
little impression of the intense excitement, 
the apprehension and the inconvenience of 
the public during great conflicts. 

The public is alternately swayed by 
sympathy and fear when these conflicts are 
being waged and it is through peculiar or 
specific strikes that the influence of the 
whole method on the public mind is best 
understood, for during their continuance we 
are flooded with panaceas, either for their pre- 
vention or their regulation and suppression. 

So it is well now to consider some of the 
more important battles which have occurred 
in our own generation and which may well 
be designated historic in their character. 



112 Greai Modern Battles 

In the late sixties and early seventies the 
public mind was aroused to a pitch of ex- 
citement and apprehension never before ex- 
perienced in this country, through a long- 
continued series of outrages committed by a 
secret organization in the anthracite coal 
regions of Pennsylvania known as the 
''Molly Maguires." An open strike, no 
matter how tragical or how disastrous, does 
not create that feeling of apprehension re- 
sulting from the secret actions of an or- 
ganization like the Molly Maguires. Their 
depredations may be considered as forming 
the dark background of our own modern 
battles. 

No great strike was inaugurated by this 
secret organization, but the murders, wreck- 
ings, and other actions by it caused a fever- 
ish condition of the public mind, so that 
when the great era of historic strikes really 
opened people feared for the continuance of 
industry and for the general prosperity and 
business of the country, and when the first 
great historic strike occurred in 1877 it is 



Great Modern Battles 113 

not to be wondered at that the public ex- 
citement was so great that the most drastic 
remedies were considered as the only ones 
with which to deal with labor uprisings 
and insurrections. 

The very first of these great historic 
strikes, although many severe ones of less 
importance had taken place prior to that 
year, occurred in 1877 on the Baltimore & 
Ohio Railroad at Martinsburg, West Vir- 
ginia. The immediate cause of the first 
strike in that year arose because the wages of 
all employees had been reduced 10 per cent. ; 
but this was but one of many grievances 
which had been growing for a long time. 
Irregular employment was one of the causes, 
for men with families to support were often 
permitted to work only three or four days 
per week ; the balance of the time they were 
forced to spend away from home along the 
lines of the road at their own expense, so 
they had but little left for their families. 
Again, wages, which were payable monthly, 
were sometimes retained two, three or even 



114 Grcdt Modem Battles 

four months ; the tonnage of freights was 
increased and the men were paid for the 
number of miles run, irrespective of the 
time consumed in running. 

This great strike affected in most instances 
only the freight trains, but when it began 
there was rioting and destruction of prop- 
erty and loss of life at Martinsburg and 
Baltimore and various places in Pennsyl- 
vania. The state militia at Martinsburg 
and Pittsburg sympathized with the strikers, 
affiliated with them, and refused to fire 
upon them ; so the United States troops 
were ordered from the eastern garrisons, 
and their presence carried fear to the mobs 
and they fled. In Cincinnati, Toledo and 
St. Louis mobs of roughs and tramps col- 
lected and succeeded in closing most of the 
shops, factories, and rolling mills in those 
cities, while in Chicago a body of reckless 
men known as the Communists of that day 
enhanced the excitement by formidable 
demonstrations. In those cities and in 
Syracuse, Buffalo, West Albany and Horn- 



Great Modem Battles 115 

ellsville, the state militia dispersed the mobs 
without violence or destruction of property. 

What occurred during this strike on the 
Baltimore and Ohio occurs in all strikes, 
accompanies all armies and all conflicts 
where it is not the intention to do violence 
to individuals or to private property ; that 
is the committing of depredations by the 
hangers-on, the camp-followers, those who 
are always ready to seize any occasion as the 
opportunity for exercising their passions 
and even their feelings of revenge. 

This year, 1877, saw that memorable 
strike on the Pennsylvania railroad, which 
was accompanied by riots, many acts of 
violence, intimidation, and the destruction 
of a great amount of property. This road, 
after the panic of 1873, found it necessary 
to reduce wages, while on account of the 
general decline in business, another reduc- 
tion was made in June, 1877. So the em- 
ployees of the different roads having their 
termini at Pittsburg inaugurated serious 
agitations of a strike on account of these re- 



ii6 Great Modem Battles 

ductions, and the agitations resulted in the 
formation of a '^ Trainmen's Union." 

The activity of this organization resulted 
in a plan for a general strike to take place at 
noon, June 27, 1877, on the Pennsylvania, 
the Pittsburg, Fort Wayne and Chicago, the 
Allegheny Valley, the Panhandle, and the 
branches of these roads ; but the general 
strike was organized to work from Alle- 
gheny City. On the night of June 25th, 
the union consisting of the Panhandle em- 
ployees held a meeting in accordance with 
a notice of the day before, emanating from 
about forty members, to the effect that the 
strike was to take place. It there developed 
that other members did not care to enter 
upon a strike, and further that some of 
them had disclosed all their plans to the 
railroad authorities ; so measures were 
adopted looking to the prevention of the 
strike, and word was sent to all points of 
the road. Many members of the union, 
however, felt that in this they had met 
with defeat, and dissatisfaction resulted. 



Great Modem Battles 117 

The great strike of July 19th, at Pitts- 
burg, cannot be designated as a strike of the 
Trainmen's Union, nor did that union have 
anything to do with tlie previous one in 
July on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad at 
Martinsburg. 

Early in that month the Pennsylvania 
Railroad issued some orders relative to the 
hauling of trains, by which the company 
could dispense with the services of one half 
of its freight conductors, brakemen and flag- 
men on the Pittsburg division ; so on the 
morning of July 19th, on several of the early 
trains which were to leave Pittsburg in ac- 
cordance with the orders of the road, the 
men, consisting of two brakemen and one 
flagman on each train refused to go out and 
the trains did not leave the yard. New 
crews were made up as none of the 
regular trainmen would take the places of 
the strikers, but the strikers threw coupling 
pins, etc., at these men as they were en- 
deavoring to make up the train ; so they 
were by force compelled to desist. The 



ii8 Great Modem Battles 

strikers, curiously enough, numbered only 
twenty or twenty-five men, but they took 
possession of the switches and refused to let 
any trains pass out. The number of strikers 
increased gradually and by midnight of the 
19th they and their sympathizers numbered 
several hundreds of men. 

It is useless to give the story of this great 
strike, for it is a long one, but in brief the 
sheriff of the county could not handle the 
crowd and the governor of the State of 
Pennsylvania sent three regiments of infan- 
try and a battery of artillery to Pittsburg. 
The strikers increased in number, mobs 
gathered, and on the 20th there were four or 
five thousand men crowded in the vicinity 
of the station, ready to be led into any ex- 
cesses which the excitement attending their 
collection suggested. On the next day, the 
21st, the rioting began and while the troops 
were getting into position many of the guns 
of the militia were seized and the bayonets 
twisted off. The troops made no impression 
upon the crowd. The mob grew more 



Great Modern Battles 119 

boisterous and stones and other missiles 
were thrown at the troops. Pistol shots 
were fired by the crowd and the troops re- 
ciprocated, and several persons were killed 
and wounded. The inquest showed twenty- 
two persons in all who had been killed by 
the soldiers at Twenty-eighth Street. But 
the regular firing when it began dispersed 
the crowd and the troops were left in posses- 
sion of the field. 

It was not for long, however ; when all at- 
tempts to move trains had been abandoned 
and the troops needed rest and food, the 
mob collected again, and having obtained 
arms by breaking into gun stores, began to 
fire upon the roundhouse, machine shops, 
and the windows of places where soldiers 
were gathered. 

Then the mob set fire to cars, running the 
burning cars down the track nearest the 
roundhouse to set it on fire. 

On the 22d the strikers obtained a field- 
piece and were in position to fire on the 
roundhouse, but the military officers notified 



120 Great Modern Battles 

the strikers that if they attempted to fire the 
piece they would be fired upon in return. 
No attention was paid to the warning, and 
when one of the strikers was seen ready to 
fire the cannon, they were fired upon by 
the troops and several of the mob killed. 
Then gatling guns were brought into 
action, and the sight of them with their 
death-dealing qualities scattered the mob. 

Attacks and counter attacks were kept up 
until the 23d, when two regiments were 
marched through the principal streets of the 
city of Pittsburg for the purpose of quell- 
ing any disposition toward riotous conduct 
which might still exist. A citizens' com- 
mittee was organized and exercised all its 
influence in quelling disturbances. Never- 
theless, cars were set on fire and attempts 
were made to fire the station, but the citi- 
zens' safety committee interfered and this 
was about the last attempt at violence at 
Pittsburg, although it was several days be- 
fore order was fully restored. 

How much this sounds like the story of 



Great Modem Battles 121 

the actions in Paris in 1848 ! It was of the 
same piece, carried on so far as rioting was 
concerned more by the hangers-on than by 
the real working men, although the disturb- 
ances were instituted by their initiatory ac- 
tion and their constant agitation. This be- 
comes more emphatically true when we 
understand that from the very beginning of 
these great strikes the real employees of the 
road had the active sympathy of a vast pro- 
portion of the people of Pittsburg. 

Nearly 1,600 cars, mostly freight but 
including passenger and baggage cars, with 
their contents — or such of the contents as 
were not carried away by thieves and 
thugs who surrounded the movement, 126 
locomotives, and all the shops, materials, 
and buildings — except one or two small 
ones — belonging to the railroad company, 
were burned on Saturday night and Sun- 
day. Tracks and property in other parts 
of the city were also ruined by fire, the 
rails being warped and twisted and the 
ties burned, as was often the case in the 



122 Great Modem Battles 

Civil War. All the adjuncts and methods 
of real war were resorted to to carry out 
the designs of the strikers. 

It was currently reported, and so far as 
I have been able to learn the reports were 
true, that a great many old freight cars 
which must soon have been replaced by 
new, were pushed into the fires by agents 
of the railroad company. This was a 
novelty then, but it occurred in subsequent 
strikes, and of course the loss of these cars 
was included in the damages for which 
the railroad company made claims on the 
county of Allegheny. It has been es- 
timated that the damage, including loss 
of property and loss of business, which 
was inflicted by the mob at Pittsburg 
amounted to over $5,000,000; while the 
actual loss of the railroad company alone, 
not including the freight they were trans- 
porting, was about $2,000,000. Neither 
the number of men thrown out of employ- 
ment, nor the total value of property 
destroyed through the resulting riots can 



Great Modem Battles 123 

be given, but the chief of the Bureau of 
Industrial Statistics of Pennsylvania made 
a statement that the total amount of claims 
presented to Allegheny County — the courts 
having decreed that that county was liable 
for all damages sustained through the 
riots— amounted to $3,592,789. Two and 
three-quarter millions of this sum was 
paid by compromise and judgments in a 
few years after the strike, but it is only 
within the past few months that the last 
sum awarded as damages has been paid by 
the county. 

It is not strange that the whole country 
was greatly excited during and after these 
strikes, and the question was constantly 
propounded everywhere, How can such 
affairs be prevented, or the causes leading 
to them be removed ? 

As a matter of fact both the strike on the 
Baltimore & Ohio and that at Pittsburg 
were unsuccessful. The objects for which 
the battles were fought were not secured. 
It is not strange that the minds of a great 



124 Great Modern Battles 

many people then reverted to the outrages 
of the Molly Maguires ; the fear that the 
unruly mob, induced to act even by the 
righteous position of the strikers them- 
selves, might control industry, hamper 
transportation, and incommode the whole 
public, grew to intensity, and the drastic 
remedies proposed were in accordance with 
the public fears. 

The next strike that would be called 
historic was that of the telegraphers, which 
occurred in the year 1883. This involved 
the majority of the commercial telegraph 
operators in the entire country, extending 
to the linemen of the commercial companies 
and then to a few railroad operators, but 
as the telegraphers are a pretty intelligent 
body of men they managed to keep the 
information relative to this strike mostly 
to themselves. It is known, however, that 
the strike took place to secure the cessation 
of Sunday work without extra pay, the 
reduction of day work to eight hours, and 
the equalization of pay between the sexes 



Great Modem Battles 125 

for the same work. A demand was made 
also for a universal increase of wages. The 
strike began July 19th and ended August 23, 
1883, although it was declared off by the 
union on the 17th. The strike Avas un- 
successful, the employees losing a quarter of 
a million dollars, and expending $62,000 in 
assisting destitute fellow operators; while 
the employers lost nearly $1,000,000. The 
number of persons taking part in the strike 
was 6,270. One of the companies made a 
provisional agreement with the Brother- 
hood of Telegraphers and in accordance 
therewith resumed business, so while the 
other companies were resisting the strike 
the company which made the agreement 
secured a handsome profit, on account of 
the increased volume of business which 
came to it. 

This strike must be considered as one of 
the minor historic conflicts of our time. 
But it was not long before a real historic 
strike, or series of strikes, took place. 

This was on the Southwestern, or what is 



126 Great Modem Battles 

known as the Gould system of railways, 
and occurred in the years 1885 and 
1886. 

The shopmen on the Missouri Pacific in 
Missouri, Kansas, and Texas were dissatis- 
fied with the wages received, and about 
March 9th nearly four thousand of them 
struck for a restoration of the wages which 
had been paid in the previous year. The 
strike was begun at Sedalia, Missouri, 
March 7, 1885, and in two days became 
general all over the system, while during 
its continuance freight traffic was almost 
practically suspended. The strike came to 
an end on the 16th of March, and on the 
17 th work was generally resumed. 

The second strike on the Gould system 
took place a year later, the trouble begin- 
ning at Marshall, Texas, on the Texas & 
Pacific Railroad, and grew out of the dis- 
charge of a foreman for alleged incom- 
petency. This would seem to be rather a 
trivial occasion for so great a strike as that 
which resulted. 



Great Modern Battles 127 

The discharged foreman was prominent 
in the local assembly of the Knights of La- 
bor, and on his discharge, this order inau- 
gurated the great railroad strike on the 
Gould system in March, 1886. It was 
claimed, however, that this discharge was 
in violation of an agreement made the year 
before at the settlement of the first Gould 
strike, at the instance of the governors of 
Missouri and Kansas. Other violations 
were also claimed. 

During the month of March all freight 
traffic was practically suspended on the 
roads in question, and about ten thousand 
men thrown out of work, nearly all of them 
being strikers. 

In the latter part of March, on the 28th, 
the strike was declared off, but the railroad 
officials declined to treat with the men, ex- 
cept individually — a weakness in corpora- 
tions which has continued until the present 
day, although it is fading away, and rail- 
road officials, themselves the representatives 
of others, are now more willing to treat 



128 Great Modem Battles 

with committees, also the representatives of 
others. 

Owing to this declination, on April 5th 
the order declaring the strike at an end was 
rescinded. The backbone of the strike was 
broken by that time, however, and traffic 
was resumed, but under police protection 
for a while. 

The strike of March, 1885, might have 
been considered a just one, but that of 
March, 1886, was ill-judged and no really 
adequate cause existed for it. The disastrous 
result and the lack of public sympathy for 
the strikers bring the two strikes into sharp 
contrast and mark an epoch in great rail- 
road conflicts. 

No really prominent or emphatic battle 
occurred again — although there were very 
many strikes in the meantime — until July, 
1892, when a most serious difficulty arose at 
Homestead, Pennsylvania, between the Car- 
negie Steel Company and its employees at 
the Homestead works. This difficulty grew 
out of one in the previous month in regard 



Great Modern Battles 129 

to wages. No agreement could be reached, 
and the company closed its works on the 
30th day of June and discharged its men. 
It is interesting to know that only a small 
portion of the men were affected by the 
proposed adjustment of wages. Most of 
them, however, were members of the Amal- 
gamated Association of Iron and Steel 
Workers ; hence the trouble. 

The company had refused to recognize 
the Amalgamated as an organization or to 
hold any conferences with its committees ; 
it was proposed to operate the works with 
non-union men. The union men refused 
to accept the reduced rates of wages and 
agreed that they would resist the company 
in its attempts, whatever they were, to pros- 
ecute its work with non-union men. The 
lodges of the Amalgamated Association or- 
ganized an advisory committee, with author- 
ity to take full charge of the affairs of the 
strike. All employees of the company were 
ordered to break their contracts and to re- 
fuse to work until the Amalgamated Asso- 



130 Great Modem Battles 

elation was recognized and its proposed con- 
ditions adopted. 

The working men had already resorted to 
one of their familiar methods — that of 
hanging the president of the company in 
effigy. 

Two days prior to the time provided by 
the contract under which the men were 
working the works were shut down, and on 
the Fourth of July the company asked the 
sheriff of the county to protect the works 
while they carried out their intention of 
making repairs, as they declared. The em- 
ployees, however, organized to defend the 
works against what they called encroach- 
ments, or demands to enter ; that is, they 
would not allow any one to enter on the pre- 
tense of repairing the works. As a matter 
of fact the employees of the great Home- 
stead steel works took possession of them. 
When the sheriff's men came near, the 
employees who were assembled in force no- 
tified them brusquely to leave the place, 
stating that they did not intend to create 



Great Modern Battles 131 

any disorder and that they would not allow 
any damage to be done to the property of 
the company. They also offered to act as 
deputies in preserving order, but this offer 
was declined. The advisory committee dis- 
solved and the records of that committee 
were destroyed. 

The immediate occasion of the fighting 
which took place later on at Homestead was 
the approach of a body of Pinkerton detect- 
ives, who were gathered in two barges on 
the Ohio River some distance below the 
works. To make a long story short, the 
workmen entrenched themselves behind 
steel billets and prepared to resist the ap- 
proach of the Pinkerton barges and all at- 
tempts to land, the result being a fierce bat- 
tle brought on by the heavy volley of shots 
fired by the strikers. The Pinkertons were 
armed with Winchester rifles, but they were 
obliged to land and ascend the embankment 
single file, and so were soon driven back to 
their boats, many of their men being killed 
or wounded by the fire of the entrenched 



132 Greai Modern Battles 

strikers. Many attempts to land failed, the 
detectives being subjected constantly to a 
galling fire. 

This opening battle, which took place on 
the 5th of July about four o'clock in the 
morning, was continued during the day and 
renewed the following day, a ten-pound brass 
cannon having been secured by the strikers 
and planted so as to command the barges 
moored at the banks of the river. Then an- 
other force of a thousand men took up a 
position on the opposite side of the river, 
where they protected themselves both by 
a cannon which they had obtained, and by 
a breastwork of railroad ties. 

In mid-forenoon the bombardment com- 
menced, the cannon were turned on the 
boats and the firing kept up for several 
hours ; but the boats were protected by 
heavy steel plates inside, so efforts were 
made to fire them. Oil was sprayed on the 
decks and sides of the boats, while many 
barrels of oil were emptied into the river 
above the mooring-place of the boats, the 



Great Modem Battles 133 

object being to set fire to it and allow it to 
float against them. The Pinkertons, under 
these warlike preparations and actions, 
finally threw out a flag of truce, which un- 
fortunately was not recognized by the 
strikers. The officers of the association 
then interfered and the surrender of the 
Pinkertons was arranged. Under the arm- 
istice the detectives were to be safely guarded 
on condition that they left their arms and 
ammunition, and having no other alterna- 
tive they accepted the terms. Seven had 
been killed and twenty or thirty wounded, 
and on their march through the streets they 
were treated with abuse. Eleven workmen 
and spectators were killed in the fights 
which ensued. 

On the 10th the governor sent the en- 
tire force of the militia of the common- 
wealth to Homestead and on the 12th the 
town was placed under martial law and 
order was restored. 

Congress made an investigation of this 
great strike, but no legislative action was 



134 Great Modern Battles 

ever taken. The strike was not declared 
off until November 20, 1892. 

The Homestead strike must be considered 
as. the bitterest labor war occurring in this 
country, prior to that which took place at 
Chicago two years later in 1894. And the 
Homestead affair brings again to mind the 
barricades of Paris in 1848. 

The railroad strikes of 1885 and 1886 
seem to have been ordinary affairs compared 
with the great strike in Chicago in 1894, 
known as the Pullman strike. It was the 
most extensive and far-reaching labor con- 
troversy, so far as railroads are concerned, 
which can properly be classed among the 
historic conflicts in this generation. 

It began with a private strike at the 
works of the Pullman Palace Car Company 
at Pullman, a suburb of Chicago ; it ended 
with a practical insurrection of all the labor 
employed on the principal railroads radi- 
ating from Chicago and some of their affili- 
ated lines, paralyzing internal commerce, 
greatly inconveniencing the public, delay- 



Great Modem Battles 135 

ing the mails, and in general demoralizing 
business. Its influences were felt all over 
the country to greater or less extent, ac- 
cording to the interests involved. The 
contest was not limited to the parties with 
whom it originated, for there were soon 
brought into it two other factors or forces. 

We need not stop to consider the cause of 
the original strike at Pullman. It was one 
of those affairs which needed but little 
common sense to have been avoided. The 
Pullman Company was having a contro- 
versy relative to the wages of its men — men 
who were not employed in any way as rail- 
way employees. The American Railway 
Union — an ephemeral organization — had 
achieved partial success in a contest with 
the Great Northern Railroad only a few 
weeks previous to the Pullman strike. It 
had foolishly taken into membership many 
Pullman employees, although as stated 
they were not railway people ; but they 
worked on things that were used on rail- 
ways, and for that trivial cause were en- 



136 Great Modem Battles 

rolled among the members of the American 
Railway Union. 

So when the employees at Pullman had 
trouble with the company, the Railway 
Union espoused their cause, on the ground 
that they were members of the union. 
This union then numbered about 150,000 
members. It was the purpose of the Rail- 
way Union to enroll nearly all the railway 
employees of the whole country, so that 
w^hen the time should be considered ripe 
the roads from the Atlantic to the Pacific 
and from the Canadian line to the Gulf 
could be struck at one instant, paralyzing 
absolutely the traffic of the country, and 
thus enabling the union to dictate terms 
before business could again be resumed. 

The strike at Pullman was therefore 
premature and the Railway Union w^as op- 
posed to it, but it felt obliged to protect the 
Pullman employees in their local contro- 
versy. The strike was ordered in strict 
obedience to David Harum's Golden Rule 
of horse trading which was, as some of you 



Great Modern Battles 137 

may remember, '' Do unto others as you 
think others are going to do unto you, but 
do it first." The application of this rule 
has caused many strikes and lockouts, but 
it is emphatically illustrated by the strike 
at Pullman, which was ordered May 11, 
1894. 

The night before the committee of Pull- 
man employees and the executive officers 
of the American Railway Union held a con- 
ference in Chicago and voted unanimously 
that there should not be a strike at Pull- 
man. The Railway Union officers consid- 
ered the time not yet arrived to carry out 
their grand scheme of continental stagna- 
tion. The committees went home, but the 
Pullman committee was authorized to order 
a strike if during the next few days cir- 
cumstances arose which, in their judgment, 
warranted it. About two o'clock on the 
morning of the 11th of May the committee 
was informed that the Pullman Company 
proposed to declare a lockout. The com- 
mittee then, adopting David Harum's rule, 



138 Great Modem Battles 

ordered a strike and thus precipitated the 
whole conflict. The American Railway 
Union having declared its purpose to espouse 
the cause of the Pullman employees entered 
this conflict and practically carried it on. 
Then the General Managers' Association, a 
body of men representing all the roads 
radiating from Chicago, through what it de- 
clared the necessity of protecting the traffic 
of its lines, made its contest with the Ameri- 
can Railway Union. These roads represented 
a combined capital of more than two billion 
dollars and employed more than a quarter 
of all railroad employees in the United 
States. There were then involved three 
forces : the Pullman people, the American 
Railway Union, and the General Managers^ 
Association of all the railroads in Chicago. 
All these were enlisted in the strife for 
supremacy, and these forces alone, without 
reference to the conditions and circum- 
stances attending the strike or accompany- 
ing it, constituted this one of the really 
great historic strikes of America. 



Great Modem Battles 139 

The Railway Union declared a boycott 
against Pullman cars, the General Man- 
agers' Association undertook to protect their 
interests, while the sympathies and antago- 
nisms of the whole country were aroused. 
The attempt was made to induce all trades 
in Chicago to join in a great sympathetic 
strike, but here the American Federation 
of Labor brought its influence to bear and 
no general sympathetic strike occurred. 
Surely here is an instance which illustrates 
the indebtedness of the country to that 
great organization which has again and 
again prevented universal strikes. However, 
riots, intimidations, assaults, murder, arson 
and burglary, with lesser crimes, attended 
the strikes, and troops were engaged, as in 
the other strikes referred to. United States 
troops and United States deputy marshals 
were sent to Chicago to protect Federal 
property, and to prevent obstruction in the 
carrying of the mails and interference with 
United States commerce. They were not 
sent there to make any attempt whatever to 



140 Great Modem Battles 

suppress the strike, nor could they, as such 
matters belonged to the city and state au- 
thorities. But the state militia was called 
in for some service. The total force em- 
ployed during the continuance of the strike 
of 1894 was 14,186, practically an army corps. 
All the attending circumstances of the 
strike point to one conclusion, that a share 
of the responsibility for bringing it on 
belongs in some degree to each and every 
party involved. A vast deal of bitter 
feeling was generated — so bitter that no 
party was ready to consider the rights of 
the others. That is the attitude in all 
great strikes. The other parties, on the 
other hand, claimed that they were justified 
in adopting any means in their power to 
resist the demands of the attacking party. 
The probability is that neither recognized 
the rights of that third party involved, the 
public, to such an extent as to induce them 
to forbear bringing inconvenience and 
disturbance upon it. It was in many 
respects the most suggestive strike that 



Great Modem Battles 141 

has ever occurred in this country and if 
it only prove a lesson sufficiently severe to 
teach the public its rights, and to teach it 
to adopt measures to preserve those rights, 
it will be worth all it cost. This perhaps 
is the great lesson of that great conflict. 

It is interesting to note that at the in- 
vestigation made by the Chicago Strike 
Commission, the head of the American 
Railway Union was asked : " Is it right 
for employees, when making demands, to 
proceed deliberately to paralyze business, 
especially of parties not involved, in order 
to enforce those demands ? " ''Certainly," 
was the reply. And to the question 
whether it is also right, then, for employers 
to resort to any means by which they can 
resist those demands, even involving 
stagnation to business, '' Certainly," was 
also the reply. This is the real strike at- 
titude ; any method necessary to carry out 
the purposes of either party can properly 
be resorted to. 

The courts, however, and not the army 



142 Great Modem Battles 

of over 14,000 men broke the strike. It 
was through the injunctions granted by 
the courts that the strike lost its force. 
The strike practically ceased about the 
middle of July. 

The losses were enormous. In earn- 
ings the roads lost more than $5,000,000. 
Thirty-one hundred employees at Pullman 
lost $350,000. About 100,000 employees 
upon the twenty-four railroads radiating 
from Chicago lost nearly $1,500,000. But 
beyond these very great losses were suffered 
incidentally throughout the country. The 
paralyzation of transportation, with all the 
incidents of a great war, gave the people 
again apprehension and fear for the safety 
of our institutions. Bradstreet's estimated 
the losses of the public at $80,000,000, but 
whatever the losses were, they taught the 
necessity of preventing such disasters. This 
strike illustrates how a small local dis- 
turbance, arising from the complaints of a 
few people, may result in involving a large 
part of a great country. 



Great Modern Battles 143 

The great consolation rests with us that 
the lessons of the Chicago strike did not 
fail of their effect. The American Railway 
Union proposed to break down the noble 
railway brotherhoods. On the contrary, it 
broke down itself, and the brotherhoods 
were stronger than ever in their work. 
They have been conservators of peace on 
the railroads, and since the Chicago battle 
there have been no railway strikes of any 
importance in this country ; and so long 
as the influence of the Brotherhoods of 
Locomotive Engineers, of Railway Con- 
ductors, of Railway Trainmen, and Rail- 
way Firemen is exerted with the wisdom 
shown during the past ten years there will 
be no great railway wars. The managers 
of roads recognize this influence, and deal 
with it on a manly, businesslike basis. 

There have been other great strikes 
on the railroads, and especially during 
the period in which the Chicago strike 
occurred. It was an era — or may so 
be called — of vast labor controversies. 



144 Great Modern Battles 

The Lehigh Valley Railroad strike, which 
occurred in 1893, the strike on the Great 
Northern of April, 1894, the great coal 
strike which occurred in the same month, 
and the Chicago strike of June and July 
— all crowded into the space of seven 
months — are sufficient to make that brief 
period memorable. 

Passing over many strikes of considerable 
proportions, we come to the great anthracite 
coal strike of 1900. This was practically a 
peaceful affair, and was brought to a suc- 
cessful conclusion through political in- 
fluence. The coal operators considered it a 
political '' hold-up." At that time business 
men generally were apprehensive that the 
financial condition of the country might be 
greatly disturbed through the coinage 
system. It was a presidential year, and the 
success of one of the parties they feared 
meant free coinage of silver. The operators 
and business men, without regard to party 
affiliations, were against this. The con- 
tinuance of the strike of that year in the 



Great Modem Battles 145 

anthracite coal regions it was thought 
would jeopardize the interests of those who 
believed in what they called the sound 
money system, so the operators were in- 
duced to yield their position and acceded to 
the demands of the miners by granting an 
increase of 10 per cent, to their earnings. 
The legitimate result of such an illegiti- 
mate method had more to do with the great 
strike of 1902 than almost any other cause ; 
but the strike of 1902 passed into history as 
one of the most extensive battles labor has 
ever fought. 

While it was not during a presidential 
year it was during a year of congressional 
elections, and the operators very naturally 
felt that, having yielded two years before 
for political reasons, the strike of 1902 was 
inaugurated at a time when like influences 
might again be brought to bear upon them, 
and they were determined that the politi- 
cians should have nothing whatever to do 
with its settlement ; the settlement of 1900 
left an increased sensitiveness and irrita- 



146 Great Modem Battles 

tion in the mining districts which had not 
existed during the twenty-five years previ- 
ous to the strike. 

The occasion of the battle of 1902 was the 
demand of the United Mine Workers of 
America for an increase in wages and a de- 
crease in time, and the payment for coal by 
weight wherever practicable and where 
then paid by car-load. But the cause lay 
deeper than the occasion and may be found 
in the desire for recognition of the miners^ 
union by the operators. Leading up to it 
and surrounding it were long-continued 
grievances, some of them imported from 
England and Wales. There have been 
grievances in all mining operations from 
Laurium to Pennsylvania. 

The United Mine Workers were of course 
encouraged by their victory of 1900, and so 
in 1902 thought they would be able to 
secure that dearest result of all, the recogni- 
tion of their union. The history of that 
great strike has been told and re-told ; it is 
familiar to you all, yet it deserves a place 



Great Modem Battles 147 

in this account of historic strikes perhaps 
more clearly than any other whose history 
can be written. 

After many ineffectual attempts, through 
conferences and otherwise, nearly the entire 
body of mine workers, about 147,000, aban- 
doned their employment and remained idle 
until the strike was declared off on the ap- 
pointment of the Anthracite Coal Strike 
Commission. The strike lasted from May 12 
to October 23, 1902. An exceedingly in- 
teresting feature in the ordering of the 
strike lies in the fact that, under the order 
of the executive committee of the miners' 
union, work was suspended on May 12th, 
and on the 15th, their general convention 
having assembled, it was voted to continue 
the strike. The total vote cast was 811. 
That for the strike was 46H or 57 per cent, 
of the convention, and the number against 
it, 3491. The majority for the strike there- 
fore was lllL 

It is impossible to state with any par- 
ticular degree of accuracy the losses oc- 



148 Great Modern Battles 

casioned by the strike, but according to 
the Chief of the Bureau of Anthracite 
Coal Statistics, the shipments of coal 
decreased twenty-two and one-third mil- 
lion tons, 40 per cent, of the shipments 
of the previous year. Making an esti- 
mate on coal mined for local trade 
and consumption, the total decrease in 
1902 must have been nearly twenty-five 
million long tons. This meant a decrease 
in the receipts of the coal mining com- 
panies of over $46,000,000, while the mine 
employees lost in wages a total of upward 
of $25,000,000, and $1,800,000 was spent 
by the mine workers of the country in the 
relief of the miners of the anthracite 
regions. The decrease in freights paid to 
the railroad companies on the larger sizes, 
had it all been sent to New York harbor, 
would be about $19,000,000, and on the 
smaller sizes the total decrease in freight 
receipts would be about $28,000,000. This 
is simply the material part or the economic 
side. 



Great Modem Battles 149 

The story of the other side, of the 
intimidations, violences, murders, boycotts 
— all the accompaniments of a great labor 
war — can be told, even at the best, only 
by a recital of those cases which came to 
the public attention or were recorded in 
the courts ; and these we have not time to 
enumerate. 

The cruelties, some of them crude and 
others refined to the last degree of cruelty, 
were considered as war measures ; but 
when those of us who are not actively 
interested in a contest of this kind believe 
that there is but one war-making power 
in the land, we can hardly comprehend 
the application of war terminology to the 
affairs of a strike, especially when, in what 
is curiously called civilized warfare, some 
of the practices that obtained in this great 
conflict in your own state would not be 
tolerated in a war between nations. 

True, the officers of the union deprecated 
all such practices, made speeches warning 
the union men against them, and urged 



150 Great Modern Battles 

peaceful conduct only, but they were 
powerless to enforce their precepts. An- 
other thing is true which must be recog- 
nized in this great conflict, and that 
is that the arrests for criminal assaults 
during the continuance of the strike were 
not more in number than usually occur in 
the same area of territory when there is no 
strike on. 

I suspect that all such great conflicts 
have their comical or amusing sides. Cer- 
tainly this occurred in the anthracite 
regions. I remember one case of an 
illustration that appeared in a well-known 
magazine owned and published by one of 
your own citizens here in Philadelphia, of 
the pursuit of a scab or a non-union man 
by a large body of unionists. The poor 
scab was represented as in great terror and 
fear for his life, and the picture showed 
him just at the point of being captured. 
The fact is that the enterprising artist who 
produced the picture secured about one 
hundred men to pose as pursuers ^nd one 



Great Modem Battles 151 

of their number to pose as the pursued. 
This man who represented the terrified scab 
was a union man, and the whole thing was 
arranged for effect. 

A number of such instances occurred. 
They served to irritate and alarm the 
public, but without them there was a 
sufficient number of cruelties, intimidations 
and violences to alarm any man who cared 
for the welfare of his country. 

We need not discuss the culpability of 
either side ; it existed in both parties. The 
great third party to all strikes — the public 
— was not considered, and the chief result, 
the crudest of all, was the coal famine, 
precipitated by the lack of a sufficient 
amount of moral courage and patriotic 
devotion to have prevented the occurrence 
of the contest, or to have stopped it before 
the public suffered from its consequences. 

It was the greatest labor battle of our 
country, on account of its extent, the ele- 
ments which entered into it, and the meth- 
ods of its prosecution. But it was the 



152 Great Modem Battles 

greatest for another reason, and that is be- 
cause in the end reason and moral force 
won the strike, and the strikers and the 
operators yielded to the decision of the 
most powerful tribunal in any land — the 
opinion of the people. It was the greatest 
battle again, because of the action of the 
president of the United States ; and this 
action I would like to have you clearly 
understand, because of the allegations made 
at the time, and because of the fears that 
now exist that the chief executive may 
interfere in any industrial crisis or that 
labor organizations may appeal to him to 
assist them. 

Many people in October, 1902, felt, and 
many people now think, that the president 
interfered in the coal strike of that year. 
There may be reasons for the existence of 
such feeling, but the fact is the president 
did not interfere in the conduct of that 
great strike. 

In June, pursuing actual lawful means, 
that is, acting in accordance with the pro- 



Great Modern Battles 153 

visions of Federal law, the president sought 
to ascertain the facts through the officer 
designated by law to supply such facts. 
But the strike went on, the suffering of the 
people increased, apprehension became more 
and more intense. Early in October, with 
a view to assisting the parties to come to 
some reasonable agreement, the president 
invited a conference of the chief coal opera- 
tors and the chief officers of the United 
Mine Workers of America in his office at 
Washington. On the assembling of this 
conference — and all invited came — the 
president stated emphatically that his sole 
purpose in calling the conference was to 
listen to any suggestions which any or all 
of them had to make to him ; that he had 
no suggestion whatever to make relative to 
the conclusion of the great controversy. 
The conference adjourned without any 
definite action. 

Public excitement grew apace ; public 
apprehension grew faster than the excite- 
ment. Careful and conservative senators 



154 Or^^^ Modem Battles 

of the United States avowed their readi- 
ness to authorize the president to take any 
drastic measures necessary to bring the 
controversy to a close. Politicians every- 
where, economists, sociologists, were quite 
ready to fall into line with the State Social- 
ists and take possession of the coal mines 
and operate them in the interest of the 
people. No such feeling had ever been 
generated by any other of the historic 
strikes. Here was a new phase, a new 
danger, a new element. 

A few days after this celebrated confer- 
ence, which occurred on October 3d, the 
people of New York were apprehensive of 
great riots — coal riots like the bread riots 
that had occurred in England — and all at 
once the largest operators sent a request to 
the president for the appointment of a com- 
mission, to which they were willing to leave 
all the points of the contest, pledging them- 
selves to abide by the decision. You can 
imagine that the president was greatly 
gratified, and he immediately sent to the 



Great Modem Battles 155 

officers of the union asking them if they 
would consent to the same terms, which 
consent was promptly and ananimously 
given. Then the president appointed his 
commission, and with its appointment his 
appearance in the coal strike affairs ceased. 

The operators might have invited any 
other citizen of the United States to desig- 
nate a commission, the Governor of Penn- 
sylvania, any judge, any private citizen, 
and have agreed, as they did agree, to abide 
by the decision ; but the president was the 
chief executive, he was the most prominent 
man in the country, his judgment was re- 
lied upon, and so they simply invited him 
to name a commission. If any man cares 
to condemn, or even to criticise, this action 
on the part of President Roosevelt, he must 
do it without understanding the facts or 
else by reason of a peculiarly constructed 
mind. 

To be sure the commission when it was 
appointed had no power, except the power 
delegated to it by the parties in controversy, 



156 Great Modem Battles 

and not by the president. It was extra- 
judicial, it was extra-legislative, it was 
extra-everything that you may choose to 
apply to it, but it was the board of abitra- 
tion selected or agreed to by the parties 
themselves and its creation must remain as 
the action of the parties to the controversy. 
It stopped the strike immediately as by 
agreement. The parties had a court before 
which they could state all the facts and 
opinions which they cared to bring before 
it. For five months the commission was 
engaged in taking testimony, giving every 
party on either side the opportunity to pre- 
sent his case, and every member of the great 
array of counsel was given the chance to 
present the testimony he saw fit to bring 
before the commission. Thus in five 
months the commission heard 566 witnesses 
and took down over 10,000 pages of testi- 
mony ; and the good it did, again making 
this strike one of the most emphatically 
historic battles in modern times, grew out 
of the fact that employers and employees 



Great Modem Battles 157 

were brought face to face and could frankly 
and safely state the facts of which they 
were possessed, or the views held by 
them. 

Each learned something of the other, and 
when the award was finally made, which 
was practically an agreement to continue 
for three years, both sides acquiesced, and 
they have lived fairly peaceably and reason- 
ably since its promulgation. 

Here is the other great good that has 
come out of that controversy, — the recogni- 
tion of moral principle, the recognition of 
manly action, of mutual conciliation. In its 
settlement we trace all the attributes, all the 
elements of that first great attempt — so far 
as the records show — to induce men to come 
together on a common basis, and that was 
when Isaiah, six hundred and fifty years 
before Christ, finding the troubles that 
existed in Jerusalem beyond his control, 
asked the chief men to meet him and said 
to them : *' Come, let us reason together." 

This story of historic strikes — and there 



158 Great Modem Battles 

are those who would include other disturb- 
ances than those I have mentioned — ought 
not to be closed without reference to the 
disturbances in Colorado in 1903. But 
those disturbances can hardly be brought 
into this category. 

They were peculiar and during their con- 
tinuance the country at large thought that 
the whole state of Colorado was afiPected by 
them. The conditions which brought them 
about had continued for twenty-five years. 
During that period there was a series of 
strikes, practically thirteen different con- 
troversies, beginning in 1880 at Leadville, 
the others occurring at various places dur- 
ing the years 1894 to 1904 inclusive. 

They were all attended with much ex- 
citement and more or less disorder, but the 
most extensive of them all was in 1903-4 
through the action of the gold miners at 
Cripple Creek. During that term there 
were serious interruptions to the mining in- 
dustry of the state, but it requires some ex- 
pansion of our understanding of what con- 



Great Modem Battles 159 

stitutes a historic strike to bring these into 
that list. 

It should be stated, however, that during 
1903, out of the fifty-nine counties in the 
state of Colorado, only four were affected by 
the strikes. All the other counties were as 
peaceful as any state in the Union. 

There were very many elements entering 
into the disturbances that were peculiarly 
unique and that have not accompanied 
other affairs, such as the organization of 
the Citizens' Alliance, which immediately 
engaged in actions for which they had con- 
demned the miners. The miners had 
deported non-union men. This was a fa- 
vorite method of getting rid of persons ob- 
noxious to the unions. The Citizens' Alli- 
ance immediately retaliated by the deporta- 
tion of union men and their sympathizers. 
Murders, boycotts, illegal imprisonments, 
injunctions, all the chief paraphernalia of 
the modern labor war were employed. The 
total expense to the state for the various 
military campaigns on account of labor 



i6o Great Modern Battles 

disturbances from 1880 to 1904 was over 
11,000,000. 

The whole story is a tragic one, but can 
hardly be crystallized into a brief history. 

The long-continued chain of disturbances 
in Colorado has left its mark in the four 
counties involved, and to a considerable ex- 
tent upon the whole state and the public at 
large. The real facts were distorted and 
misrepresented, and it was hard to ascertain 
them ; but they were ascertained by the in- 
vestigation I conducted and they are to be 
found in full in a report upon them. 

The last strike, which began in Novem- 
ber, 1903, and ended in June, 1904, although 
savage and brutal, did not affect the country 
materially like the coal strike of the year 
before. None of us felt the effects of a re- 
duction of the producing power of the 
mines and smelters of Colorado. We heard 
only of the individual outrages, whether 
committed by strikers or important citizens 
through their secret organizations. Po- 
litically the effects of the strike were felt 



Great Modem Battles 161 

in Colorado. They helped, however, to a 
feeling that there must be some way by 
which such controversies can be prevented, 
or, if they occur, suspended ; and so we 
have come to that point in this course 
when the treatment of strikes and the ef- 
forts to prevent or settle them must be con- 
sidered. 



IV 

HOW MODERN BATTLES OF LABOR 
ARE TREATED 



IV 

HOW MODERN BATTLES OF LABOR ARE TREATED 

From the time of the Mosaic law, the 
laws of Numa Pompilius, the Solonic dis- 
pensation, the Twelve Tables, the Code of 
Lycurgus, and the Aggrarian laws before 
and during the reigns of the Gracchi, to the 
latest session of any legislature in any of 
our states, in all lands and in all countries, 
attempts have been made through positive 
enactment to regulate or to fix, in ever 
varying degree, the condition of the work- 
ers of society. 

It has been always, as it is now, a popular 
idea that through law men can be made 
better and their acts supervised. This 
course has been natural and quite logical, 
for what we call problems are ever appearing 
and their solutions are ever being sought. 

But what we call problems are simply 
new conditions growing out of the evolu- 



i66 How Battles of Labor are Treated 

tion of social and industrial forces. We 
have the temperance problem, so-called, and 
yet not many years ago there was no such 
problem. Increased intelligence, the in- 
creased sensitiveness of the public conscience, 
are ever bringing things to the front to be 
dealt with by society, and what was once a 
matter of ethics, an action constituting per- 
haps a moral obliquity, is now a matter for 
the criminal code to be punished as a 
crime. 

On the other hand, there are other 
matters which were once considered crimes, 
like the combination of labor resulting in 
strikes and all the concomitants of labor 
conflicts — excluding of course intimidation 
and violence — that are not now regarded as 
crimes, but the natural result of the evolu- 
tion of economic forces. 

The complications of modern society — 
using that word in its broadest sense — are 
the complications which come of the 
recognition by each man of others' rights, 
and of the recognition by governments of 



Ho'U) Battles of Labor are Treated 167 

individual rights, privileges, and duties. 
The old conflict was that by which man 
secured the right to live. The clash of 
arms in primitive societies meant physical 
development, and all the struggle for ex- 
istence meant this; it was as natural and 
as logical as any other conflict. 

The change gradually came to the world 
from militancy to industrialism, not the 
struggle for existence but the struggle for 
subsistence ; then when the struggle for 
subsistence ceased primarily by doing away 
with the old iron law of wages, the struggle 
was broadened to that for some of the 
aesthetic potentialities of life, some of those 
things which mean culture in some degree 
and those attributes of man which are 
necessary for his becoming not only an 
economic, but a social and political factor. 

The claims of labor to-day are in this 
direction. So we went through the great 
clash of ideas at the beginning of our 
civilization, and this clash meant mental 
development. We have been through the 



i68 How Battles of Labor are Treated 

clash of ideas in the theological world, and 
this clash meant spiritual development. 
Now with the struggles under industrialism 
we have the evolution of conditions which 
we like to call economic problems. 

The sociologist who has studied society 
in its growth and understands ever so 
partially the unfolding of the elements 
which make society, sees that conditions 
are not and cannot be problems. They are 
results, not causes. Therefore all proposed 
solutions for social and economic difficulties 
must be in the nature of systems and at- 
tempts to modify conditions in order to 
bring about results other than those exist- 
ing. 

Yet many of the proposed solutions of 
existing problems, or methods for develop- 
ing existing conditions, are worthy of study 
and consideration, even though they may 
not contain within themselves any effective 
remedies for supposed or recognized evils. 
There are men who apparently look on 
these conditions, or economic problems, if 



How Battles of Labor are Treated 169 

you prefer to give them that name, as 
arising primarily from somebody's vicious 
conduct, and these are the men who always 
have a panacea — a machine method — by 
which better conditions are to be secured. 

Yet John Stuart Mill tells us that there 
is not any one abuse or injustice prevailing 
in society by merely abolishing which the 
human race would pass out of suffering into 
happiness. This is a broad economical as 
well as social truth and helps us to ap- 
proach any proposition which looks to 
the betterment of conditions with some 
scepticism, unless the proposition is 
based on the broadest humanity and on 
the practical application of the great 
principles which make Christianity what 
it is. 

It is perfectly easy to arraign society and 
say that it is at fault because it does not 
accomplish the ideal of the special pleader, 
and this is particularly true when we are 
dealing with strikes — the blotch which ap- 
pears upon the face of industrial society as 



lyo How Battles of Labor are Treated 

the result of some impurity in the blood. 
The crank, the man who sees something 
very clearly but not in its true relations, 
would deal with these blotches alone but 
would not adopt a constitutional treatment 
which should, through the purification of 
the blood, remove the blotches. This state- 
ment becomes intensified in its significance 
when we understand what labor is. I think 
I like Ruskin's definition better than any 
other, a definition which I have already 
given. That is : ^^ Labor is the contest of 
the life of man with an opposite." 

Here again we get the very underlying 
elements of labor strikes, and in this we 
find the deeper philosophy underlying the 
whole question of labor, especially as evi- 
denced by its battles. Legislation evidently 
has not cured the blood ; it has not changed 
the conditions out of which controversy 
grows. It has always, until later years, 
been drastic in its nature, and as a rule has 
resulted in more harm than good. At the 
present time the courts are great factors 



How Battles of Labor are Treated 1 7 1 

in the treatment of strikes and of strikers. 
This I shall refer to later. 

Outside of legislation from time imme- 
morial there have been efforts — and they 
have been scattered all through history — 
to remove the incongruities attending pro- 
duction, to relieve the unhappy lot of work- 
ers through some communistic or socialistic 
movement. I need not pause to describe 
these efforts ; they are all summed up in a 
very few words, that in the ownership not 
only of the property, but of the tools of in- 
dustry by society itself the workers would 
be made happy. 

Communism is the basic element of all 
socialism. Socialism in its drastic form — 
and I mean social democracy as preached in 
Europe but not much in this country — ad- 
vocates the old, old method that in ancient, 
as well as in modern times, has proven so 
disastrous whenever the attempt has been 
made to establish a state upon its principles. 
No such state as yet has ever been estab- 
lished. The causes of the failure to estab- 



172 How Battles of Labor are Treated 

lish such a state are to be found chiefly in 
the constitution of human nature. 

Fundamentally society under any com- 
munistic regime is to be conducted on 
the basis of a man's being called upon 
to work according to his capacity and of 
receiving goods or commodities according 
to his needs. In an absolutely pure, un- 
selfish state of society where judgment, 
integrity and loyalty to the principle ob- 
tain, provided every individual united 
with the community, such a measure of 
work and compensation might be ideal ; 
but it has never taken men long under it 
to understand that their capacity was ex- 
ceedingly limited and their needs not 
limited. 

Of course the fundamental basis of all 
such attempts by labor or by society through 
communistic methods, or by organizations 
of labor, or by men individually — ancient 
or modern — is to secure more than they are 
getting. How to get it is the great ques- 
tion. So far, in answer to this question 



How Battles of Labor are Treated 173 

we have had the laws referred to, commu- 
nistic attempts, strikes, — and yet the ques- 
tion is a universal one ; each one of us asks 
it, How shall we obtain more for the serv- 
ices rendered ? The man in receipt of $2 
per day wants $2.50, the man getting $2.50 
must have $3, the $3 man must have $4, 
and the $5 man $10 ; the man who is in re- 
ceipt of $5,000 a year salary thinks he ought 
to have $10,000, and the $10,000 man can 
live up to $20,000 easily. This is the labor 
question so far as compensation is concerned, 
and it belongs to the capitalist, to the pro- 
fessional man, as well as to the man who 
works for daily wages. 

It is the universal question. Naturally 
the economist says that it can be answered 
only by increased efficiency, and that effi- 
ciency will be gauged by society ; laws, 
strikes, all the accompaniments, all the 
machinery adopted to secure this increased 
compensation have little or no effect, ex- 
cept here and there and now and then when 
a strike results in an increased wage. The 



1 74 Ho'O) Battles of Labor are Treated 

difficulties underlying the problem are not 
economic alone ; they are ethical and belong 
to society as an ethical organization, for 
society recognizes that there is no greater 
inequality than the equal treatment of un- 
equals. The immorality of equal compen- 
sation for unequal services is an immorality 
which society always recognizes, no matter 
what the attempts may be to secure the in- 
equality of compensation for equal services. 

Legislation therefore, whether supplied 
by the organized legislative bodies of the 
world, or that coming through the com- 
mittees of a communistic society, or that 
coming through the laws and declarations 
of a trade union, cannot be relied upon 
either to avoid strikes or to satisfy the 
strikers. 

How often we have been told that certain 
laws would solve the labor problem, and 
yet, beginning with the act known as Sir 
Robert Peel's Act of 1802 to the present 
time, we have had 104 j^ears of distinctive 
labor legislation in the mother country and 



How Battles of Labor are Treated 175 

in this ; we have had the inspection of fac- 
tories here by law ; we have had legislation 
regulating employers' liability, the hours of 
labor, sanitary conditions, and yet I think 
no one would hesitate to say that the labor 
question is as intense to-day as at any time 
during the whole 104 years. 

Laws have not avoided strikes, and in 
only slight degree have they had any in- 
fluence in settling them. I mean statutory 
provisions, and not the acts of the courts. 

There is of course within socialism cer- 
tain constructive elements which must be 
applied in all these matters if we hope for 
a better condition. The best definition of 
modern socialism with which I am ac- 
quainted is that made by Mr. Fairman, a 
member of the London Fabian Society, a 
socialist organization. He says socialism is 
not a system nor a method, but a criticism; 
and this is quite correct. 

The constructive elements of any social- 
ism lie in the fact that socialism criticises 
conditions. It is constantly arraigning so- 



176 How Battles of Labor are Treated 

ciety and bringing out the defects in the in- 
dustrial system. They are thus brought to 
public view, when perhaps if the socialists 
did not exist the public might not be so 
thoroughly informed. It is when the social- 
ist undertakes to settle all these questions 
by a revolution in the form of government, 
by ignoring the inherent qualities of human 
nature itself that the fault comes to view. 

This is true because commerce and in- 
dustry are competitive. They are growing 
more and more cooperative. Individualism 
prevails as against collectivism or social 
service, and yet collectivism is the great 
dynamic of society. It is in this latter 
power that there is to be found, perhaps 
more than in any other feature, a method 
by which society can rid itself of labor wars. 

But collectivism expresses itself in vari- 
ous forms. It is socialistic. The word col- 
lectivism is adopted here and there by 
socialists to take the place of the word 
socialism, for it means transactions for and 
by collections of individuals ; collective 



Ho*u) Battles of Labor are Treated 177 

trading, collective bargaining, mean the 
trading and bargaining by collections, and 
thus all such movements introduce an 
element of socialism. 

I think the time has gone by when we 
should have any fear of the word socialism. 
It has no very powerful menace in it ; the 
kind we know in this country is harmless. 
It expends itself in the propagation of ideas 
relative to municipal and state ownership 
of some of the utilities which are necessary 
for our comfort and welfare. 

The first expression which collectivism 
gave in any crystallized form was in indus- 
trial conciliation and arbitration, as the 
means both for preventing strikes in the 
first place and for settling them in the sec- 
ond place. The principle of conciliation is 
growing. In its very nature the word it- 
self betokens a spirit of recognition of 
mutual rights ; the willingness to come 
together and talk over the affairs of an in- 
dustrial establishment ; the desire not only 
to talk them over, but to adjust differences 



178 How Battles of Labor are Treated 

of opinion, to adjust the attempts to regu- 
late the conditions whereby all parties can 
work with more or less harmony and con- 
tentment. 

Originating in France as a matter of his- 
tory, it has spread over Europe, has become 
one of the leading features of industrialism 
in England, and is in use in this country to 
a far greater extent than the public supposes. 

In simple terms it means that the em- 
ployers and employees in a great productive 
establishment, or any other concern devoted 
to industrial pursuits, shall each appoint 
committees — standing committees — fairly 
representing each side, to which any differ- 
ences, or controversies, or demands, no mat- 
ter from which side they emanate, can be 
referred. This joint committee then has 
the opportunity, because it has the ability, 
to secure each from the other the very in- 
formation needed to discuss all matters in a 
friendly way, in a manly way, and thus 
come to a conclusion by which a strike is 
avoided. 



Hoiv Battles of Labor are Treated 179 

The work of the Anthracite Board of 
Conciliation is significant not only in itself, 
but in its results. From its organization, 
in June, 1903, up to August, 1905, one 
hundred and forty-one cases were submitted 
to it for arbitration. Ten were complaints 
by the mine owners and one hundred and 
thirty-one by the mine workers. Of the 
total number of complaints submitted, forty- 
six were withdrawn and twenty-eight 
were not sustained, making seventy-four 
complaints which had not sufficient basis 
to warrant their presentation to the board. 
Of the remainder nineteen complaints were 
sustained, three were partly sustained, eleven 
mutually settled, three compromised and 
thirty-one were left pending. Seventeen 
cases were sent to an umpire, the board be- 
ing evenly divided on them. Most of these 
cases were decided against the miners, but 
the decision in all cases, whether against 
the miners or against the operators, was ac- 
cepted as final, and no break in tlie work 
of the mines occurred. There was hardly 



i8o How Battles of Labor are Treated 

one case disposed of by the board or by the 
umpire, which, under other conditions, 
would not have precipitated a strike. 

Such a course involves the very highest 
ethical elements in men, so far as business 
relations are concerned. It is the practical 
application of what I feel bold enough to 
call '' righteousness in industry." 

Now, a man has no right on the lecture 
platform to use that phrase, '' righteousness 
in industry," without explaining what he 
means by it. Industrial conciliation in- 
volves it. 

A few years ago, just after the great ex- 
position at Chicago, many railroads in this 
country were crippled on account of having 
overstocked their roads with cars. Times 
were bad, as you will remember, after the 
panic of 1893. The great Southern Rail- 
way, like many others, found it absolutely 
necessary to reduce wages. After working 
under the reduction for a year or two the 
men of that system made a demand for a 
restoration of wages, and the committee 



How Battles of Labor are Treated 181 

came to Washington and presented the 
matter to the managing vice-president of 
the road. He wished to take it up and 
discuss it with the committee, but the 
president of the road said to him : '' Bald- 
win, there is no such thing as ethics in the 
conduct of a railroad " ; but after some 
argument he said, '' Well, try it on and 
we will see how it comes out." So the 
managing vice-president met the men, told 
them to come again on such a day and he 
would lay before them the whole business 
of the road. They came on the appointed 
day, and he had a printed statement of 
receipts and expenses, a statement relative 
to the non-payment of dividends on stock, 
the struggle of the company to pay interest 
on its bonds, and all the facts concerning 
the conduct of the business of that great 
road of about 4,000 miles and having 6,000 
employees. 

They discussed the matter for days, 
mutually, manfully, each recognizing the 
dignity of the other. They adjusted some 



i82 How Battles of Labor are Treaied 

injustices, but there was no general in- 
crease of wages. The men were entirely 
satisfied when they learned the facts, and 
when the conference adjourned they went 
home with a new dignity in their char- 
acters. They had been met by great 
official railroad magnates as men equal to 
them, and had been treated in a manly, 
businesslike way. 

Where was the victory ? You know who 
Baldwin was. You know that a monu- 
ment is being erected to him in acknowl- 
edgment of his great services and his 
greater character. He applied the prac- 
tical principles of industrial righteousness. 
Afterward when he was sought as the 
president of a great enterprise, he said to 
the directors : '' You probably do not want 
me. You know how I treat labor ; you 
know that I confer with the committees 
of their unions ; you know that with them 
I discuss all matters ; I think you do not 
want me." And the chairman of the board 
said : " Baldwin, that is why we want 



How Battles of Labor are Treated 183 

you." So he was elected to that great 
position which he held until his death. 

Then there is another instance which I 
never weary of relating, which was told me 
by Mr. Abraham S. Hewitt, whose works 
at one time had been running at a con- 
siderable loss, during which they had re- 
duced wages ten per cent. The men after 
a while were weary of the lower compensa- 
tion and asked to have their wages restored. 
Mr. Hewitt did not say to them what 
Pharaoh said to Moses and Aaron, but he 
said : '' Boys, it is your right to come here 
and make this demand ; not only that, it 
is your right to know the facts and know 
why we cannot meet it, if we cannot, and 
so if you will send an accountant here he 
shall have all our books, and we will abide 
by his report." The men accepted the 
offer, chose their accountant and when they 
received his report again waited upon Mr. 
Hewitt and said : "■ Mr. President, we have 
come to withdraw our request for a restora- 
tion of wages. We know your situation ; 



184 How Battles of Labor are Treated 

we know you are losing money, and the 
union has unanimously asked us to recom- 
mend to you a further decrease of ten per 
cent, in our wages." This suggestion was 
not adopted, but Mr. Hewitt, in telling me 
of the incident, said : ''Do you think any- 
body could get up a strike in our works ? " 

This is righteousness in industry. It 
does not mean any complicated machinery 
or method or any process that cannot be 
seen and understood ; but it is the simple, 
direct, moral, Christian way of men meet- 
ing men. It is the Pauline method of set- 
tling troubles in the church, and it is the 
only method by Avhich any controversy 
should be dealt with. 

Here is the first expression, then, of this 
principle known as collectivism. It grew 
out of the endeavor to settle strikes, after 
they were once declared, through arbitra- 
tion. Arbitration in its final analysis is the 
purest kind of socialism, because it is the 
effort of society to adjust affairs between 
contestants in any industry. 



How Battles of Labor are Treated 185 

A strike is on, the community is dis- 
commoded, is meeting with losses, is suffer- 
ing, and it says to the parties directly in- 
volved, '' If you cannot conduct your busi- 
ness affairs in such a way as to avoid dis- 
commoding us, we shall be obliged to help 
you conduct them." 

Arbitration is not a solution of labor 
problems ; it is not a remedy for strikes, 
but it is one of the highest and grandest 
methods for settling a war after the war has 
begun. 

One of these days bodies of employees or 
employers, whether individuals or corpora- 
tions, which so misconduct their affairs as 
to bring about strikes will be held in public 
estimation as are those men who are guilty 
of fraudulent bankruptc3\ 

We all know the great power of arbitra- 
tion. We know what it can accomplish, 
and we know how it fails. We know what 
it did for this country four years ago ; and 
it was not because either party wished to 
resort to it, but because the public, that 



i86 How Battles of Labor are Treated 

great third party involved in all strikes, 
through its opinion compelled the contest- 
ants to refer their differences to an impartial 
body. But it is collectivism after all. It is 
the negotiation of one body with another. 

There is now a form of collectivism, 
practical, businesslike, humane, and moral, 
which bids fair to accomplish more in the 
avoidance of strikes, and in the treatment 
of strikes after they occur, than any other 
which has been suggested ; that is what is 
now known as collective bargaining, a new 
force comparatively but one which expresses 
the most important principles of industrial 
management. Let us see what it is. 

A thousand men, we will say, decide to 
go into the business of cotton manufactur- 
ing, and they subscribe their money to- 
ward the stock of the corporation. The 
stockholders meet for organization. They 
immediately see that they cannot conduct 
the business ; the body is too large, a thou- 
sand men cannot attend to the innumer- 
able details of the business transactions, so 



Hotv Battles of Labor are Treated 187 

they choose a committee of twelve men, it 
may be, to represent them, to conduct the 
affairs of the cotton factory. The twelve 
men, who are commonly called directors, or- 
ganize, and they find that they are too 
numerous to attend to the daily affairs and 
details of the business, even though they 
can meet often as the stockholders cannot ; 
so they choose a manager. The manager 
therefore is the man who conducts the or- 
dinary business affairs of the concern ; he 
represents the directors and is responsible 
and accountable to them ; the directors are 
responsible and accountable to the stock- 
holders. Every time this manager hires a 
man or buys goods, materials or what-not 
necessary for the conduct of the business, 
he indulges in collective bargaining ; that 
is, he bargains or trades for the collection of 
individuals. 

The factory cannot run, however, without 
a thousand operatives. The thousand opera- 
tives after a while think it is for their in- 
terest to organize a union and they have an 



i88 How Battles of Labor are Treated 

executive committee. Trouble arises, or the 
organization thinks there should be some 
change in the rules of work, or an increase 
of wages, or a reduction of hours, or some- 
thing else which seems to them of impor- 
tance, and they delegate a committee to wait 
upon the manager for a consultation. The 
manager says, "• I cannot deal with you as a 
committee of our employees ; I must deal 
with our employees individually." In 
other words he, the crystallized representa- 
tive of collective bargaining himself, refuses 
to bargain collectively with his employees. 
Now, a case has been known where the 
committee, refused a conference as stated, 
has afterward been called upon by the 
manager to adjust the affairs of the factory 
and the committee has replied, '' No, Mr. 
Manager, we cannot deal with you ; we will 
deal with the stockholders individually." 
This answer is just as logical and just as 
ethical as the statement of the manager; 
both parties were unreasonable, illogical, 
and unethical. Each should have dealt 



How Battles of Labor are Treated 189 

with the other as representing the constitu- 
ency behind them. 

That is collective bargaining, where the 
manager or the board of directors on one 
side and the committee of employees on 
the other come together and make their 
own arrangements. So out of that situa- 
tion has grown what we call the trade 
agreement. 

The trade agreement is a compact between 
the employers and the employees, stipulat- 
ing all the terms of employment, rules and 
conditions of the works, wages of the peo- 
ple, etc., and also stipulating that whenever 
any difference arises, whether on account of 
propositions of the employers or employees, 
such differences shall be referred to a com- 
mittee, usually called a conciliation com- 
mittee, specifically defined in the compact. 

This is the highest type of collective bar- 
gaining. 

The trade agreement offers every oppor- 
tunity for the highest forms of conciliation, 
and it is performing an immense service in 



igo How Battles of Labor are Treated 

all industrial relations. It is quiet in its 
action, but effective, and the instances of the 
breach of agreement by either the employers 
or the employees in this country are so 
rare that reference hardly need to be made 
to them. 

You will remember that in 1903, during 
the pendency of the work of the Anthracite 
Coal Strike Commission, the bituminous 
members of the United Mine Workers of 
America met in Indianapolis for the sole 
purpose of considering the propriety of can- 
celing the agreements between them and the 
bituminous operators. The bituminous 
operators were making great profits, on ac- 
count of the shortage in the anthracite coal 
supply. The convention met, discussed the 
matter, and unanimously voted not to break 
the agreements. 

Could there have been a greater moral 
lesson in teaching the power and the virtue 
of the trade agreement than that action of 
the bituminous miners ? 

In England this form of agreement, or 



How Battles of Labor are Treated 191 

rather this method of avoiding open con- 
flicts, has existed in many of the leading in- 
dustries of that country for more than 
thirty years, and in those industries where 
it has applied there have been no disturb- 
ances, no strikes, no warfare. 

In this country for some fifteen or more 
years certain great industries have used the 
trade agreement, and the public has never 
heard of the establishments utilizing it, ex- 
cept through their advertisements of goods 
for sale. 

Here and there of course trouble occurs, 
even with the existence of the agreement, 
and a few instances of breach of agreement 
have occurred ; but on the whole it has 
worked admirably and has prevented strikes. 
The results of the adoption of the trade 
agreement, however, are not exploited by 
the press. We hear of the strikes that oc- 
cur, we know the progress of the battles, as 
we hear the exaggerated accounts from 
morning to morning, and we think the 
country is being disrupted by labor wars ; 



192 How Battles of Labor are Treated 

but we do not hear of the thousands and 
thousands of cases that formerly might have 
resulted in battles being prevented by this 
moral instrument, this instrument which 
brings men face to face in a temper suited to 
discuss calmly and in a businesslike way the 
differences that exist. 

Another great moral influence grows out 
of the trade agreement, and that is, it brings 
to the front the ablest men in the unions. 
The men must be competent to deal with 
the employers in their business affairs. 

Sometimes these trade agreements provide 
directly for the open shop. The union does 
not care so much for the open shop as it does 
for the recognition of the union as a factor 
in the enterprise. 

Nearly all leading trade unionists are op- 
posed to strikes. They order them as a last 
resort. I think, however, they are quite 
unanimous in advocating the necessity and 
the usefulness of the trade agreement. 
Hence a resort to this particular feature of 
collective bargaining will more and more 



Ho<uj Battles of Labor are Treated 1 93 

relieve the public of the inconvenience re- 
sulting from a labor battle. It will not only 
do that ; it will avoid some of the illogical 
doctrine which now too often actuates the 
union in its consideration of differences 
which arise. 

The trade union is a voluntary social or- 
ganization and is, therefore, like all other 
organizations, subordinate to the laws of the 
land ; it cannot enter upon legislation in 
the establishment of rules that are inimical 
to the laws which apply to every one else. 
Yet the union, in its endeavor to secure its 
own ends, often sets up a distinct governing 
agency and assumes to control those who 
do not join it, and to deny to them the very 
personal liberties which the members claim 
for themselves, and which the constitution 
and laws guarantee to every person. 

It was Abraham Lincoln who said, '' No 
man is good enough to govern another man 
without that other's consent." This grand 
principle applies to trade unionists as well 
as to every other citizen. 



194 Ho'O) Battles of Labor are Treated 

The union by its rules assumes to inter- 
fere with the management of the business 
of the employer. These are things that 
under the trade agreement are quietly and 
morally settled and not left as irritating 
elements existing between employer and 
employee. The trade agreement thus in- 
duces confidence, the lack of which leads to 
more trouble perhaps than any other one 
element. 

It is often alleged, and with considerable 
truth and justice, that without force, in- 
timidation, violence, and boycotts a strike 
could not be carried on. That is to say, a 
strike is organized for the very purpose of 
coercing employers, and that this coercion 
would fail were it not for the apprehension 
created by some form of lawlessness. All 
these forms of lawlessness are too often con- 
sidered as war measures, and those who urge 
them or set them in operation do not consider 
the moral bearing of the matter. This is a 
very serious danger point, and one that is 
being recognized more and more by the lead- 



How Battles of Labor are Treated 195 

ers of great organizations. Many leaders 
now say with equal justice and truth that, 
while they may have the sympathy of the 
public at the inception of a strike, the mo- 
ment lawlessness of any kind begins, the 
sympathy of the public is lost ; for the 
public insists that if there is any justice in 
the claims of the strikers they should rest 
upon that justice and not upon war meas- 
ures to establish it. 

There are very serious complications even 
in this question. It is perfectly true that 
in some of the great historic strikes which 
have been described, the employers them- 
selves have instigated acts of violence. 
This was for two reasons. First, so long as 
there were no such acts there was no occa- 
sion to call upon the constabulary or troops, 
but with such acts they could reasonably 
call upon the executive, either of the city 
or of the state, to interfere. In the second 
place, these acts have been instigated by 
employers in a few instances for the very 
purpose of alienating public sympathy from 



196 How Battles of Labor are Treated 

the strikers. Recognizing perhaps the jus- 
tice of their case, they have sought to des- 
troy public opinion through acts of vio- 
lence. I have been convinced during the 
investigation of strikes which it has been 
my duty to carry on that these two state- 
ments are true. I am very glad, however, 
to know that they have been very rare in 
the history of strikes. When they do oc- 
cur it is easy to see what a thoroughly 
irritating element is introduced into the 
conduct of a strike on the part of the em- 
ployers. 

The union leaders know well that in 
order to succeed in any great strike they 
must have the sympathy of the public. 
This feeling has been emphatically expressed 
by the United Mine Workers' Journal in 
the following language : 

" A strike cannot be won unless the rea- 
son for it appeals to public sympathy, and 
bad faith does not so appeal. A strike 
must be based upon grounds of justice and 
reason, and to remedy conditions that wilL 



How Battles of Labor are Treated 197 

bear the scrutiny of the just and the mis- 
representations of the unjust." 

Another irritating event sometimes oc- 
curs, at least I have known of it several 
times, and that is where a manufacturer, 
being overstocked with goods, finds it neces- 
sary to shut down his works until his stock 
is reduced. He does not wish to have the 
reputation of closing down ; so, through 
some tool or tools among his employees, 
some absurd demands are made on their 
behalf, which are promptly rejected, and a 
strike ensues. In such cases the strike lasts 
only until such time as the stock of goods 
has been reduced to the point which the 
manufacturer considers the proper one, and 
then by an arrangement with the committee, 
or otherwise, work is resumed. 

I am glad to say that this almost criminal 
resort to a strike is very rare ; but, when it 
occurs and it is known among the body of 
employees that it has occurred, one can 
easily understand that the future relations 
are strained at least, and that there is no 



igS How Battles of Labor are Treated 

confidence existing between employers and 
employees. 

These things are in the nature of in- 
timidations, and are introduced here only 
to show some of the exceedingly irritating 
elements of some controversies. They are 
not approved by unions or by employers 
generally. 

I think all men, or nearly all men, 
understand that the union itself is a 
benefit. This is certainly true of England, 
and the employers of that country would 
not have the unions crushed if they could. 
Their development has been one of real 
though slow improvement in the relations 
between employer and employee. 

All combinations of men, however, no 
matter in what direction they are made or 
what purposes they propose to achieve, 
have elements of evil in them. They are 
new and powerful forces, and they are 
factors for good or ill as they are managed 
or controlled with wisdom or unwisdom. 
Iv Any strike ordered by a well-managed 



■^ 



How Battles of Labor are Treated 199 

union which seeks no more than the en- 
forcement of demands which have been 
presented, or which is organized for some 
supposed benefit of its members, when no 
law of society is transgressed, whether wise 
or unwise in the inception and purposes, 
is an exercise of nothing more than the 
legal rights that belong collectively or in- 
dividually to its members ; and whatever 
coercion results from the demand or from 
the strike itself is not now considered 
illegal, nor does the law condemn it. 

It is the indirect consequence of the 
legal exercise of the right to work or the 
right to cease work, but when such a strike 
is organized with the idea that its pur- 
poses can be accomplished only by in- 
timidating the employer or intimidating 
the non-union man through any form 
of violence or otherwise, or through a 
boycott which threatens to destroy business 
or to incommode or injure innocent parties, 
then the law condemns it, and rightly; 
and it is then that the idle and the 



200 How Battles of Labor are Treated 

vicious associate themselves with the 
minority of the strikers and give color 
to the whole conflict. 

It was said by the Anthracite Coal Strike 
Commission that a labor or other organiza- 
tion, whose purpose can be accomplished 
only by the violation of law, has no right 
to exist. On the other hand it may be 
said with equal force that an employer who 
resorts to some of the methods already 
indicated, in order to gain his ends, has no 
right to continue in business. 

All this means that the non-union man 
has the same right to exist, and to exist 
peaceably, as the man who belongs to the 
union. 

Out of strike methods has grown what 
we know as the boycott. It is a weapon 
of cruel creation, unmanly, cowardly, and 
unpatriotic. The boycott of course has ex- 
isted since the human race existed. Every- 
body boycotts somebody at some time. 
There are decent and polite boycotts like 
those where a merchant who does not 



How Battles of Labor are Treated 201 

employ labor under sanitary conditions or 
at good wages cannot sell his goods if a 
certain association can prevent it, and there 
are the cruel boycotts that result in murder 
and the destruction of property. Actual 
cases of such boycotts are to be found 
during every great strike. 

In the coal strike an innocent and com- 
petent teacher, who happened to be the 
daughter of a non-union miner, was dis- 
missed by the school board on the threats 
of the union, and a boy working in a drug 
store was dismissed because his father re- 
turned to work before the strike was de- 
clared off. His employer was threatened 
if he did not dismiss him. These are 
forms of boycotts which ought to be 
brought under the severest condemnation 
of law, as they are of society itself 

If A considers a dealer, B, as dishonest 
he has a perfect right to say to his friends, 
" I do not trade any more with B, and I 
advise you not to," for such and such rea- 
sons. That is a boycott ; we all indulge in 



202 How Battles of Labor are Treated 

it ; it is legitimate. But when A says to 
his friends, '' If you trade any more with B 
we trade no more with you, and if that does 
not succeed we destroy your business,^' that 
is a crime ; that is not a lawful method of 
prosecuting one's claims. 

The boycott is carried on so secretly when 
strikes are on that it is difficult to reach ; 
but in whatever form, where it results in 
the injury or even inconvenience of an- 
other, it is the worst kind of tyranny, and 
no free society should tolerate it. 

In some instances, as I have already in- 
timated, these practices which are called 
war measures would not be tolerated in what 
we designate civilized war ; for in civilized 
warfare women and children and the de- 
fenseless are safe from attack, and a code of 
honor which would condemn such practices 
as I have described controls the parties to 
such warfare. 

All these matters, cruel, barbarous, often- 
times cowardly, yield to the principles of 



Ho'U) Battles of Labor are Treated 203 

collective bargaining, and if carried too far 
in the estimation of the public, they yield 
to arbitration. 

I have referred to the courts and the part 
they play in the treatment of strikes. The 
labor men of the country are up in arms 
against what is known as the writ of injunc- 
tion. They admit the necessity of the writ, 
because they can see that it is the bulwark 
of law. It is the expeditious method to 
which courts resort when they wish to pre- 
vent an act, not simply because the act may 
be unlawful, but because it is feared it will 
result in the destruction of property or the 
loss of life or limb. The trade unionists do 
not object to the writ of injunction in cases 
where it is necessary to prevent some act 
not of itself illegal, or to save property and 
life and limb ; but they do object, and 
strenuously, to its application to them dur- 
ing strikes. Where an employer fears a 
strike, or a strike has occurred and he fears 
that violence may ensue, he seeks an in- 



204 How Battles of Labor are Treated 

junction to restrain the strikers from com- 
mitting the acts which the employer im- 
agines may be committed. 

This is the grievance of the unions, be- 
cause the acts which the injunction aims to 
prevent, if committed, would subject the 
man or men committing them to criminal 
process. The underlying reason is that 
under an injunction the employees are re- 
strained from doing those things which 
would prevent non-union men from taking 
the places of the strikers through picketing 
as it is known, or the intimidation of appli- 
cants, or the persuading of applicants from 
entering the works of the employer. This 
word '' persuade " has achieved a signifi- 
cance not before belonging to it. One may 
persuade another by argument, and per- 
suading has sometimes, many times, con- 
sisted of forcible arguments with fists and 
clubs. The injunction seeks to restrain 
men from persuading, while the unions 
want the law to define what persuading is, 
and say they ought not to be restrained 



Ho'w Battles of Labor are Treated 205 

from what they call peaceful persuad- 
ing. 

The issue of restraining orders by courts 
of equity during times of strikes has devel- 
oped during the past few years, so that 
injunctions in labor questions constitute a 
leading subject of the discussion, not only 
in legislatures, but in conventions and in 
the meetings of members of the bar. The 
Supreme Court of the United States has 
said : '' Something more than the threat- 
ened commission of an offense against the 
laws of the land is necessary to call into 
exercise the injunctive powers of the courts. 
There must be some interference, actual or 
threatened, with property or rights of a 
pecuniary nature ; but when such inter- 
ferences appear, the jurisdiction of a court 
of equity arises." 

It is upon this theory that it is possible to 
invoke the aid of a court of equity, and for 
the court to issue a preliminary or permanent 
injunction. Like most other matters of law 
in the United States, there has been little 



2o6 How Battles of Labor are Treated 

uniformity of practice in the development of 
equity procedure. In some states injunc- 
tions are issued more generally than in 
others, and in particular some of the Federal 
courts in the west have freely granted them 
under the mandatory provisions of the Sher- 
man anti-trust act. This diversity of prac- 
tice and its causes must be taken into ac- 
count whenever the labor question is up for 
discussion. 

Then there is the blanket injunction, 
such as that which was issued against Mr. 
Debs during the Chicago strike, which re- 
strained certain persons from doing certain 
things, naming them, and then covering all 
other citizens. It was a sweeping restrain- 
ing order which applied to you and to me 
as well as to Mr. Debs and his associates. 
The labor unions object to such a sweeping 
order. It was the injunction, however, in 
the Debs case which terminated the Chicago 
strike. 

It is a most difficult and complicated 
question to be adjusted by statutory law, 



Ho'w Battles of Labor are Treated 207 

but the moment you exempt one class of 
citizens from the action of the writ of in- 
junction there is a violation of the constitu- 
tion, which provides that there shall be no 
legislation benefiting one class of citizens as 
against another ; or, as we say popularly, 
such legislation would be class legislation. 
Yet there is probably some point where the 
law can come in for the purpose of defining 
the extent of the injunction, but not through 
discrimination of classes, because the govern- 
ment is instituted for the common good, for 
the protection, safety, and happiness of the 
people and not for the profit, honor or pri- 
vate interests of any one man or class of men. 
" No man, nor corporation or association of 
men, has any other title to obtain ad- 
vantages, or particular and exclusive privi- 
leges distinct from those of the community, 
than what arises from the consideration of 
services rendered to the public." 

This is the language of many of the con- 
stitutions in this country, and the principle 
of it must be carried out fully without ref- 



2o8 How Battles of Labor are Treated 

erence to industrial disputes. Without 
such principles all government is unstable, 
and the very men who seek to have law 
made for their especial benefit would find it 
reacting upon themselves if they could not 
resort to the law when conditions might be 
reversed. 

A new element in law, or rather a new ex- 
pression of an old element, has come to the 
front which, if carried out, may work won- 
ders in the prevention of strikes and boycotts, 
and that is, the responsibility of the individ- 
ual members of the union for damages ac- 
cruing through the collective action of the 
union. I take it that under the common 
law in this country where damages have re- 
sulted from the action of the union, in- 
dividual members are responsible, the same 
as a member of a copartnership is respon- 
sible for the acts of his copartners. This 
feature of the common law has not been 
prominent, because the unions had no prop- 
erty and the individual members little or no 
property which could be attached in an action 



How Battles of Labor are Treated 209 

for damages. Recently through the great 
damage to a manufacturing concern in Con- 
necticut resulting from a boycott ordered by 
some unions, the individual members were 
sued and wherever they had any property 
attachable under the law of that state, the 
property was attached. 

The leading case of this kind, however, 
that has come up in recent years, was in 
England and was what is known as the Taff- 
Vale Railroad case, where certain damage 
was done to the property of the railroad by 
an association of employees, the organiza- 
tion having a large amount of money in its 
treasury. The corporation sued the mem- 
bers individually, and then under a rule of 
the court joined the organization itself. 
The decision went in favor of the corpora- 
tion. On appeal it went against the cor- 
poration. It was then carried to the highest 
court in England, the Law Lords, and the 
latter held that the members of the associa- 
tion individually and the association itself 
were liable for damages, and something like 



210 How Battles of Labor are Treated 

1120,000 was ordered by the court in ac- 
cordance with the decision of the Law 
Lords. 

This decision excited a great deal of 
antagonism at the time but as it has been 
more calmly considered many labor leaders 
have come to the conclusion that it may 
be a good thing after all ; that with similar 
laws, making the employer liable for ac- 
cidents occurring in his works, there would 
be greater discrimination in employment, 
more safety, and better conditions. But 
without reference to this purely sociological 
side of the matter it has the greatest bear- 
ing upon the strike question and how to 
treat strikes, especially when strikes are 
accompanied by boycotts. 

Let it once be known throughout this 
land that damages resulting from a boy- 
cott can be assessed under the law not 
only against the association ordering the 
boycott, but against the individual mem- 
bers of the association, and strikes will 
decrease in number and severity. 



How Battles of Labor are Treated 2 1 1 

There are some economic methods that 
obtain in industrial matters which some- 
times prevent strikes and secure fair in- 
dustrial peace. Chief among these are 
profit-sharing, the payment of bonuses, 
prizes, and an organization of pension 
funds. Profit-sharing is not considered as 
an economic system having permanent 
value in it, yet there are those who believe 
that it offers the only way, or at least the 
chief way, out of industrial difficulties. It 
certainly enlists to some degree the loyalty 
of the employees, makes them feel that they 
are a part of the corporation or partnership 
and that the more interest they take in the 
establishment, in the economic employment 
of their time, and in the attention to little 
details, the more compensation they will 
receive. 

It is a moral system rather than a purely 
economic one. It has had varying success 
and has met with some most disastrous fail- 
ures. Its failures are always referred to when 
profit-sharing is under discussion, and yet 



/ 



212 How Battles of Labor are Treated 

if a rule be good the fact that some men 
undertaking to carry it out are not wise 
and the rule meets with failure, is not a 
very strong case against the rule itself. 
Yet there are cases where even this state- 
ment does not apply, as in the case of the 
Briggs Brothers in the north of England 
some years ago. They were working their 
mines in a community that was about as 
bad as a community could be. Drunken- 
ness, theft, everything that was bad pre- 
vailed, and the Briggs Brothers sought for 
many years for some means of bringing 
order out of chaos and of securing the 
happiness of their people. Finally they 
adopted a scheme of profit-sharing, to 
which the miners agreed, and they lived 
in peace and plenty for ten years, when 
all at once through some agitation which 
I do not call to mind the men struck and 
the profit-sharing scheme ceased to exist. 

A great house in Brooklyn some years 
ago made an agreement with its men that 
they should have once a year a certain per- 



Ho'O) Battles of Labor are Treated 213 

centage of the accrued profits. The men 
were to elect their own foreman and had 
certain other privileges, making an in- 
dustrial democracy of the great establish- 
ment ; but it was agreed that if a strike 
occurred among the men they should 
forfeit the accrued profits at that time. 
One morning in June, 1868, they were all 
in line in a parade accompanying a labor 
strike, and they forfeited for the privilege 
of parading $46,000. 

Nevertheless, in many, many cases in 
France, in England and in this country 
profit-sharing has been carried on on a large 
scale with great moral and economic results 
and an entire absence of strikes. The 
payment of bonuses and prizes belongs to 
the same system morally as profit-sharing, 
but the establishment of pension funds, or 
relief funds, has had a twofold effect in 
avoiding strikes. On some of the large 
railroads where relief funds are thoroughly 
organized, a man cannot secure employ- 
ment unless he joins the relief fund or- 



214 Ho'O) Battles of Labor are Treated 

ganization, and his pension or his amount 
of relief in case of accident or otherwise 
would be forfeited should he leave the 
company or strike. Not all the railroads 
that have established such funds have this 
provision, but the men feel, while applaud- 
ing the efforts of the company to provide 
relief in case of accident or sickness or old 
age, that they are bound in a certain way 
and cannot be free men ; that they must 
conform to certain rules which secure 
permanency of service, and thus they are 
irritated, not perhaps to the extent of in- 
dulging in a strike, but to the extent of 
making them discontented and uneasy. 

However, this question of pension funds 
by great corporations is accomplishing 
much good and should receive the approval 
of all who desire to see strikes become 
matters of the past. 

I believe that the great era of strikes 
which has existed in this country since 
about 1880 is passing away. I made a 
similar statement back in 1886 or 1887, 



How Battles of Labor are Treated 2 1 5 

and the strikes have rolled up and increased 
in the volume which I have described ; 
and yet I believe that I was right when I 
made that statement. I made no limita- 
tion of time, I make no limitation of time 
now ; but I do believe that the good sense 
of the working men of this country, co- 
operating with the good sense and the 
wisdom of the employers of labor, will see 
to it that strikes do not occur and that the 
public is not discommoded. 

A strike is uneconomical in every sense 
of the word, and all strikes for alleged 
economic reasons, while they may be 
justified from the point of view of the 
strikers, are uneconomic in their results. 
There is no form of strike, except that for 
the recognition of the union, which does 
not come into the economic category. 

There is much misunderstanding rel- 
ative to this expression '' recognition 
of the union." The public means one 
thing by it, the employers and employees 
mean another. The public usually thinks 



2i6 How Battles of Labor are Treated 

it means simply this, that the employers 
shall recognize that the union exists, 
and has a right to exist, and shall 
continue its existence. The union means 
by its recognition that it shall have a part 
in the establishment of rules, wages, and 
conditions, and that it shall be recognized 
as a party in productive industry through 
the trade agreement. 

So employers do not welcome any move- 
ment for the recognition of the union. 
They do not hesitate in many instances 
to indulge in the trade agreement as the 
result of the principle of collective bargain- 
ing, and whenever they enter such an 
agreement they do recognize the union and 
in the way the union means ; but to put the 
matter broadly, employers are averse to the 
union's dictation of terms. I think that is 
human nature. We are all ready to confer 
and agree upon what shall be done, but we 
do not like to be ordered to do a certain 
thing. 

The trade agreement, if approached 



How Battles of Labor are Treated 217 

properly, relieves the situation of such 
stress. 

It will be seen from what I have said in 
this lecture on the treatment of strikes, 
that whatever the treatment is, it must be 
in the line of the practical application of 
religious principles. The trade agreement 
is this, conciliation is this, arbitration is 
this, but more can be secured by the in- 
dividuals involved than by all the organ- 
ized methods that can be invented. 

We must recognize the principles of that 
old fable which covers the whole question of 
strikes, or of the relation of employer and 
emplo^^ee. 

" Once upon a time the other members of 
the body conspired against the stomach ; 
they declared that they had all the work to 
do, while the stomach lay quietly in the 
middle of the body and enjoyed, without any 
labor, everything they brought to it. So 
they all quit work and determined to starve 
the stomach into submission. But soon 
they discovered that while they were starv- 



2 1 8 Ho'vo Battles of Labor are Treated 

ing the stomach they, too, were being 
starved, and that the whole body was wast- 
ing away/' 

This old fable sums up the whole matter. 
The relations of employers and employees 
are not identical, as the economists describe 
them, but they are reciprocal, and being re- 
ciprocal we must recognize the principles of 
that old fable when discussing the question 
of strikes. 

We are having our industrial, social, and 
political struggles. They are all evolution- 
ary in their character and not questions, as 
I have intimated, of inauguration. Out of 
the industrial struggle there is growing 
what the late Henry D. Lloyd called a new 
political economy which looks first '^ to the 
care and the culture of men." In this lies 
what Drummond called ^' other selfishness." 
In it is to be found the hope of the future 
and that religion which shall hold in its 
power the church, industry, commerce, and 
the whole social fabric, and if religion does 
not hold these things, the hope is small in- 



Hoiv Battles of Labor are Treated 219 

deed. Hope is infinite, but our knowledge 
is infinitesimal, so we must broaden our 
knowledge to meet the range of our 
hope. 

We must recognize the struggle in all its 
phases as inspiration itself, and that with 
every new development we find confronting 
us the great wall of human elements. Who- 
ever therefore aids the struggle, to soften, to 
reduce its asperities in all rational ways, is 
the friend of humanity. We must recognize 
further that with the adjustment of old 
problems with old conditions new ones grow, 
as did Vico's republic, and that the new 
conditions or problems will agitate the 
minds of posterity, as our problems have 
enlisted our sympathy and our efforts, and 
those of the past the efforts of our ancestors 
everywhere. 

We must not be pessimistic. We must 
recognize the intelligence that is coming to 
the workers, the hewers of wood and the 
drawers of water, and that with intelligence 
and its increase there must be new problems, 



220 How Battles of Labor are Treated 

there must be new demands, or civilization 
retrogrades. 

So with these things, with a new applica- 
tion of religion, with a new political 
economy, with ^' other selfishness," we are 
in a position to meet broadly and on the 
highest plane all the industrial and social 
problems of the future. 



APR30 1S06 



'"""»"""""»»»"""«' 



